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THINKERS AND THINKING. 



BY 



J. E. GARRETSON, M.D., 

(JOHN DARBY,) 

AUTHOR OF "odd HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN," ETC. 



r 




PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

1873- 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



Lippincott's Press, 

Ph ILAUELPHl A. 



TO 
DONALD G. MITCHELL, 

(IK MARVEL,) 

WHOSE KIND PERMISSION CONFERS THE PLEASURE, 

THIS •V'OXjTjnVlIE, 

AS A SLIGHT EXPRESSION OF THE REGARD ENTERTAINED BY 

'J HE AUTHOR FOR WRITINGS WHICH ARE AS STRIPS 

OF BLUE SKY AMID MURKY CLOUDS, 

IS D EDICATED 



. " * Give us a guide/ cry men to the philosopher. ' We would escape from 
these miseries in which we are entangled. A better state is ever present to our 
imaginations, and we yearn after it; but all our efforts to realize it are fruitless. 
We are weary of perpetual failures ; tell us by what rule we may attain our 
desire.' " — Herbert Spencer : Ititrodiiction to Social Statics. 

" We must hear the advice of many people, choose what is good in their 
counsels, and follow it; see much, and reflect maturely on what one has seen; 
that is the second step in knowledge." — Khoung-fou-tseu : Lun-yu (a Chinese 
Philosophical Dialogue). 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



A VACANT corner of the sofa. 

It has long been one of the pleasures — indeed, with 
greater truth may it be said, it has been the chief 
pleasure — of my odd hours, to converse with and medi- 
tate among a little circle of living friends, and a much 
greater one of those who have passed out of the body, 
who are wont to make the quiet of my office a centre 
of their gathering. The sentient friend, as he enters, 
knocks upon the door and approaches with the greetings 
of the day. My other friends are the bodiless thoughts of 
the world ; the evolutions from what have gone before ; 
the experiences, the imaginings, the utterances of think- 
ing people of the present and of the bygone ages, — 
living thoughts, increasing the fullness of being as men 
engraft from and cultivate them. 

Life ! we query : what is life ? What is it to live ? 
What is it to get the most out of living? 

Life ! — the that which a man has, and has had, — the 
past, the living present, the future, — the oneness. Not 
alone to have come ; not alone to breathe ; not alone 
the play of muscles and the twitch of nerves ; — but the 
doing, the evolution, the work performed, the destiny 
accomplished, pleasure made, evil avoided, the glorious- 

2 (9) 



lo THINKERS AND THINKING. 

ness of creation correlated into ourselves, and given 
forth by us. 

Whence, what, whither? — herein must lie the full 
text. To-day — this hour — while the grate sends roaring 
up the chimney its wealth of generous flame, and the 
quiet of the moment invites to contemplation, let us 
together meditate on life. 

But where may one begin to meditate ? Where break 
that charmed circle, which is without. beginning, and 
has no ending ? Ah, so asked the world before Thales ; 
but that world knew not the meaning of a circle. 

Speak then, ye thinkers, silent too long to the 
masses ; let again be heard somewhat of the discourse 
of the market-place, somewhat of the talk of Cyno- 
sarges. Shall not our book be a Socratic affinity, draw- 
ing to itself and to the world the wisdom of many a 
Theatetes ? Speak, great thinkers, speak in yourselves. 
Or, if this may not be, let here our own poor language 
represent you ; for still, from very ignorance, blusters 
and reviles many a Melitus; still, in arrogance and 
affectation, struts over the life-stage many a gorgeous 
sophist. Shall not charity refine the one? Will not 
knowledge show to the other that beauty which is of 
itself and in itself? Ah, might but the speechless tomes 
which now surround me step from their quiet resting 
into a moving life, into thrilling speech ! 

And yet, philosophers and poets, little were ye 
heeded, save by the few, — even in the days when from 
lips of flesh went forth scattered seed, which, received 
upon good ground, should have grown for the garner 
that wheat which is itself life-bread. Shall better 
ground be now found for the sowing? Will revelers 



THINKERS AND THINKING. II 

leave the theatre, and plodders the mart, to commune 
with the thoughts of the academy and the grove ? Will 
exhilaration give way — even for the hour — to contem- 
plation ? — and will he who hurries forward pause to see 
whither he goes ?* 

And what is to be the nature of our outlook ? 

We are to seek that which thinkers and thinking 
yield, — Truth, — the truth of life and of living. And if 
one shall follow us, and shall mark the growth of this 
beautiful offspring, — shall catch of its light and of its 
life, — radiance shall gleam beyond him even to the 
illumining of the grave that awaits him in the far antici- 
pated future, f 

" I must fill up this osier cage of ours 
With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers. 
The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb ; 
What is her burying-grave, that is her womb ; 
And from her womb children of divers kind 
We, sucking-, on her natural bosom find ; 



-••""Never," observes Seneca, "is a wise man better employed, 
never is he more busy, than when, in silence, he contemplates the 
greatness of God and the beauty of his works ; or when he withdraws 
from society for the purpose of performing some important service to 
the rest of mankind; for he that is well employed in such studies, 
though he may seem to do nothing at all, does greater things than 
any other, in aflFairs both human and Divine." 

•j- " Every one of my writings," says Goethe, " has been furnished to 
me by a thousand different persons, a thousand different things : the 
learned and the ignorant, the wise and the foolish, infancy and age, 
have come in turn, generally without having the least suspicion of it, 
to bring me the offerings of their thoughts, their faculties, their expe- 
riences ; often have they sowed the harvests I have reaped. My work 
is that of an aggregation of human beings, taken from the whole of 
nature ; it bears the name of Goethe." 



12 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

Many for many virtues excellent : 

None but for some, and yet all different. 

O mickle is the powerful grace that lies 

In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities ; 

For nought so vile that on the earth doth live, 

But to the earth some special good doth give ; 

Nor aught so good, but strained from that fair use, 

Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse ; 

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied ; 

And vice sometimes by action 's dignified. 

Within the infant rind of this small flower 

Poison hath residence, and medicine power; 

For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; 

Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. 

Two such opposed foes encamp there still 

In man as well as herbs, — grace and rude will ; 

And where the worser is predominant. 

Full soon the canker doth eat up that plant."* 

But to drift — easier is it to drift than to work. Yes, 
but one may not always drift, — may not always dream. 
Many a water that flows in soft murmurs through quiet 
meadows and by the side of fragrant shores leads to the 
cataract. Every valley rivulet needs but time to carry 
its wave-ripples to the sea. Before every man is the 
ocean of existence, — the infinite. With every man is 
the done and the doing. Who may pass forward with- 
out knowledge of that to which he passes? or who shall 

* "If noble Atticus make plenteous feasts. 

And with luxurious chambers please his guests, 

His wealth and quality support the treat ; 

In him it is not luxury, but state. 

But when poor Rutilus spends all he's worth, 

In hopes of setting one good dinner forth, 

'Tis downright madness; for what greater jests 

Than begging gluttons, or than beggars' feasts?" 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



13 



spread the sail and fearlessly advance, if he carry not 
with him chart and compass ? Drifting — a man may 
drift safely only when the soundings are made. 

But the soundings are deep. Yes, depths and shal- 
lows make up the ocean-bed ; so, also, do hills and 
valleys constitute the landscape. Yet have we long 
lines; and depth sinks not where plummet may not 
reach — if to reach be a necessity. The deep places we 
may sound, the shallow spots we can uncover. 

Science, logic, philosophy. Our theme is of life, 
and of man's relation with life. We may look where 
we will ; we may examine wheresoever best suits the 
purpose of our search, — of our search into ourselves. 
Let not then him who would know who he is, and 
where he is, and what he is, draw back from our excur- 
sion, even though of it may come weariness to the un- 
trained mind, for in such search may we not but dis- 
cover much of true wealth. 

Let, then, think with us who will. 

To know of life is to know of many aspects. In the 
single word a very world in itself of memories comes 
crowding upon him who has thought and thinks. 

Life, says Spinoza, is but an expression of a common 
*' substance," and this substance is the all, — is God. 

There are, says Descartes, three substances, — God, 
Thought, Matter. In the first have the others their 
existence. Man is a compound of thought and matter. 
Man is not God, but is in and of God. 

The world, says Thales, is water. 

Air is it, says Anaximenes. 

Of fire is the world created, says Heraclitus: ''All 



14 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



is, and is not ; for though it comes into being, yet it 
forthwith ceases to be. ' ' 

^'Body," says Empedocles, ''is but a mingling, and 
then a separation of the mingled." " Nature is a clay, 
— a plastic. To-day it represents a man, to-morrow a 
stone." "Nothing is there but a perpetual flux of 
things; the world of phenomena is a flowing river, 
ever changing, yet the same." 

" Who thinks aught can begin to be which formerly was not, 
Or, that aught which is, can perish and utterly decay ; 
Another truth I now unfold ; no natural birth 
Is there of mortal things, nor death's destruction final ; 
Nothing is there but a mingling, and then a separation of the 

mingled, 
Which are called a birth and death by ignorant mortals." 

Everything, says Plato, esteemed by us as real, is, in 
truth, the unreal. The ideal alone is the true, for idea 
must have preceded representation : thus image is but 
the expression of idea. 

Man, says Socrates, is the measure of all things ; yet 
is he an Ego within an Ego, — a universal. A part may 
not act in itself, but only in the whole in which it"lias 
existence. 

Matter is, and always has been, and always will be, 
affirms Aristotle ; yet has it end, but each end is the 
beginning of a new end ; end is form, and the absolute 
form is spirit. 

Air is life, repeats Diogenes ; in it exist all things ; 
but arrangement may not exist in a simple, and the 
world is full of the expression of arrangement. There- 
fore is the air a compound, and in it resides a soul, for 
without reason it would be impossible for all to be ar- 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



15 



ranged duly and proportionably, and whatever object 
we consider will be found ordered in the best and most 
beautiful manner. 

It must be that in so simple a thing, taught Py- 
thagoras, as the number One, is man to seek the origin 
of all things; as, start where he will, One is found 
to precede all other numbers, and before One is there 
naught, and naught is nothingness ; in One, therefore, 
resides all of life. 

To live, is to be afloat upon a boundless ocean. 

" It rolls away, and bears along 
A mingled mass of right and wrong ; 
The flowers of love that bloomed beside 
The margin of life's sunny tide ; 
The poisoned weeds of passion, torn 
From dripping rocks and headlong borne 
Into that unhorizoned sea 
Which mortals call eternity." 

*'Time sadly overcometh all things, and is now 
dominant, and sitteth upon a sphinx, and looketh unto 
Memphis and on old Thebes ; while his sister Oblivion 
reclineth semi-sonorous on a pyramid, gloriously tri- 
umphing, making puzzles of Titanian erections and 
turning old glories into dreams. History sinketh be- 
neath her cloud. The traveler, as he paceth amazedly 
through those deserts, asketh of her, ^ Who builded 
them?' and she mumbleth something, but what it is he 
knoweth not." 

Kjiow first yourself, says the author of the Cartesian 
philosophy, for in such knowledge is the world to be 
read. ^'Cogito, ergo sum." ^'I think, therefore I am." 

True philosophy, says the French sage, may, and 



14 



TJJJXA'ERS AND rillNKING. 



is, and is not ; for though it comes into being, yet it 
forthwith ceases to be." 

*' Body," says Empedocles, " is but a mingling, and 
tlien a separation of the mingled." '* Nature is a clay, 
— a i^lastic. To-day it represents a man, to-morrow a 
stone." '' Nothing is there but a perpetual flux of 
things ; the world of phenomena is a flowing river, 
ever changing, yet the same. ' ' 

" Who thinks aught can begin to be which formerly was not, 
Or, that aught which is, can perish and utterly decay ; 
Another truth I now unfold ; no natural birth 
Is there of mortal things, nor death's destruction final ; 
Nothing is there but a mingling, and then a separation of the 

mingled. 
Which are called a birth and death by ignorant mortals." 

Everything, says Plato, esteemed by us as real, is, in 
truth, the unreal. The ideal alone is the true, for idea 
must have preceded representation : thus image is but 
the expression of idea. 

Man, says Socrates, is the measure of all things ; yet 
is he an Ego within an Ego, — a universal. A part may 
not act in itself, but only in the whole in which it Tias 
existence. 

Matter is, and always has been, and always will be, 
affirms Aristotle ; yet has it end, but each end is the 
beginning of a new end ; end is form, and the absolute 
form is s])irit. 

Air is life, repeats Diogenes; in it exist all things; 
but arrangement may not exist in a simple, and the 
world is full of the expression of arrangement. There- 
fore is the air a compound, and in it resides a soul, for 
without reason it would be impossible for all to be ar- 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



15 



ranged duly and proportionably, and whatever object 
we consider will be found ordered in the best and most 
beautiful manner. 

It must be that in so simple a thing, taught Py- 
thagoras, as the number One, is man to seek the origin 
of all things; as, start where he will, One is found 
to precede all other numbers, and before One is there 
naught, and naught is nothingness \ in One, therefore, 
resides all of life. 

To live, is to be afloat upon a boundless ocean. 

" It rolls away, and bears along 
A mingled mass of right and wrong ; 
The flowers of love that bloomed beside 
The margin of life's sunny tide ; 
The poisoned weeds of passion, torn 
From dripping rocks and headlong borne 
Into that unhorizoned sea 
Which mortals call eternity." 

^'Time sadly overcometh all things, and is now 
dominant, and sitteth upon a sphinx, and looketh unto 
Memphis and on old Thebes ; while his sister Oblivion 
reclineth semi-sonorous on a pyramid, gloriously tri- 
umphing, making puzzles of Titanian erections and 
turning old glories into dreams. History sinketh be- 
neath her cloud. The traveler, as he paceth amazedly 
through those deserts, asketh of her, 'Who builded 
them ?' and she mumble th something, but what it is he 
knoweth not." 

Know first yourself, says the author of the Cartesian 
philosophy, for in such knowledge is the world to be 
read. ' ' Cogito, ergo sum. " "I think, therefore I am. ' ' 

True philosophy, says the French sage, may, and 



1 6 TIIIXKEKS AND THINKING. 

must, for that proving of things which may alone satisfy 
the intelligent mind, start in a premise which accepts 
nothing but what is self-proving ; that alone which is 
self-proving is consciousness of existence. *'I may 
doubt the existence of the external world, for this may 
be a phantasm. I may doubt the existence of God, for 
the idea of God may be a superstition. But in the act 
of doubting it is impossible for me to doubt that I, who 
am thinking, am something. I am thinking, therefore 
I am." In this is a premise so firm and sure that the 
wildest extravagances of the skeptic cannot overthrow it. 

We may not rest our thinking upon a better premise 
than that of Descartes. 

Every object in nature, organic or inorganic, living 
or termed dead, is recognized and demonstrated by the 
physicist as having a correlative or circular existence ; 
that is to say, it is transubstantiating. An object has, 
in itself, no property ; it is, as affirmed by Empedocles, 
but a part of a common whole, being ever in a common 
flux : to-morrow it is not wherein it is to-day ; forever is 
it changing in a relationship to a circle, which circle 
comprises the functions of vitalized matter. 

We may anticipate a premise. A man is a triad. In 
his single personality exist three conditions, — Force, 
Matter, Soul. In the primal — accepting still Descartes 
— have these conditions that co-relation, which is, and 
which has been throughout the speculative ages, the 
confusion of philosophers. 

A thought of great signification here intrudes. In 
the Bible are exposed, after the manner of revelations, 
the mysteries of life. Will not the truest wisdom accept 
these teachings and go no farther? 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



17 



Happy are we to call him who receives the sayings of 
that book, asking no demonstration : wise is he, in 
his way, to all wisdom. Children receive in faith ; 
children ask for no demonstration, — happy childhood ! 
But men grow restless ; men demand proof underlying 
assertion. Well is this ; for vastly does it increase the 
interest in living, when learning and energy correspond 
with doubting, and lead over the long, long way of ex- 
ploration to the proof, — or, at least, to an appreciation 
of the existence of proof. Miserable, most miserable, 
is that man who, leaving the intuitive for the specu- 
lative, stops short, or loses himself in the journey under- 
taken. "Ask no questions," said a famous archbishop 
of Canterbury, "or ask all."* Alas for us, for all of 
us, for mankind of the age, we have insisted on the 
apple, the eating of which has necessitated the fig- 
leaves. What may we now do but press towards that 
centre of the garden wherein grows the fruit of the 
knowledge of good and evil, — fruit, real to Adam j the 
allegory, to the scientist, of learning ?f Too often may 

* " There are, indeed, those who, in the refinements of false philos- 
ophy, proclaim that the order of the universe is owing to nature and 
chance ; but, as Minutius and Seneca well observe, these curious 
reasoners do not understand the import of their own expressions ; for 
as nature is nothing more than the ordinary means by which the 
Almighty displays his power, and chance the mere effect of his unre- 
vealed will, they admit, by attributing his works to these sources, the 
very effect of that power which they affect so anxiously to deny. 
There may be some eloquence, but there is certainly no truth, in the 
writings of such men, who, blinded by their love of learning and their 
fondness for new opinions, exhibit, like Bellerophon, their own con- 
demnation, while they vainly imagine they are conveying intelligence 
and new light to mankind." — Anatomy of Melancholy. 

t " The human understanding resembles not a dry light, but admits 



1 8 TIIIXKERS AND THINKING. 

not be repeated the wise words of Bacon, ''A little 
l)hilosophy inclineth men's minds to confusion and to 
atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men about 
to the light and to religion ; for while the mind of man 
looketh on causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in 
them and go no further ; but when it beholdeth the 
chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must 
needs fly to Providence and Deity." 

The comprehension of life and of the relations of 
life, the leadings from nature to nature's God, are 
embraced fully in the study of the phenomenal. Mate- 
rialism — only another name for the phenomenal — treats 
of the material ; of what, in the physics of Aristotle, is 
termed the objective. The objective is all, is every- 
thing, which is phenomenal ; that is, which is an off- 
spring, a result. Materialism, unfortunately, is a word 
or term that has come to be so variously employed that 
disputants, in the discussion of it, commonly find them- 
selves in the condition of the wranglers over the color 
of the chameleon: *'It is black; it is white; it is 
neither of these ; it is both." Protagoras deemed him- 
self possessed of the tnie definition of virtue ; Socrates 
exhibited to him that his premises were without foun- 
dation. Cato felt that in Carneades he had found the 

a tincture of the will and passions, which generate their own system 
accordingly ; for man always believes more readily what he prefers. 
He, therefore, rejects difficulties for want of patience in investigation; 
sobriety, because it limits his hopes; the depths of nature, from super- 
stition ; the light of experience, from arrogance and pride, lest his 
mind should appear to be occupied with common and varying ob- 
jects ; paradoxes, from a fear of the opinion of the vulgar. In short, 
his feelings imbue and corrupt his understanding in innumerable and 
sometimes imperceptible ways,"— LoKU Bacon : Novum Organum. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



19 



expression of justice; yet the Cyrenian himself knew 
that the premises of his argument were of less strength 
than were blocks of sand ; even the Stagyrite might not 
distinguish, in his lack of data, the difference between 
the spirit of a man and the arterial blood of his cir- 
culatory system. 

Nature, the world, the objective, the phenomenal, — 
this is the expression which we will learn of Descartes 
to know as extension. 

Shall we commence with Force ? What is Force ? 
There is in nature an intangible something, for which 
no better name has as yet been found than Force. 
The expressions of this something differ, but never the 
principle. It is, as has been happily expressed by 
Humboldt, "that controlling agent residing in organ- 
isni, which directs through that which is its law the 
mysterious and awful phenomena of life, — a vital fluid, 
— a matej'ia vitcz, diffuscB, — the vis vitce^ 

Observation of what in man is termed life exhibits 
plainly enough to the physicist the existence of two 
separate and distinct active principles. The first — a 
principle common to all. life — is that of which we 
speak, — Force. A something is this which acts and 
which works independent of any immediate direction 
or supervision. It is that subtle influence by which is 
developed the stature of the man, the girth of the tree ; 
it is the cohesion of the stone ; it is that silent, tireless 
worker which builds even while that which it builds 
sleeps. In man, the expressions of this vita diffusa are 
nearest the surface in the processes of his organic habits. 
Man has not to will or act that he digest, or breathe, or 
co-ordinate molecular change : these are actions which 



20 TIIIXKERS AND TIIINKJNG. 

are independent of what, in the immortal sense, is the 
man, being no more peculiar to him than to the leaf 
which hangs with its friendly shade over his head. 
Neither is such a condition constant to the individual 
man. It is forever shifting and drifting from him, and 
is at the same time forever being correlated into him ; 
he catches of it, and receives of it, and gives out of it, 
as, in its continuous circle, it relates with him. Never 
rests the motion of force, never exhausted is it. When, 
from accident, or in law, the body of a man receives 
not of this spirit the animating quantum, then com- 
mences decomposition, and the form falls back and is 
lost to us in the oneness of a common dust. 

The second condition, known of every man and to 
every man, is that which is recognized as Self, — the 
that which is persistent, which changes to the man 
never ; the that which individualizes him as a something 
separate and distinct from all other expressions of phe- 
nomena, which is affected neither by vital change nor 
by molecular decomposition; the that which uses the 
body and which perceives it as its instrument ; the Ego, 
— the Soul, — the something which accident may not 
disturb, nor death incommode. To know the first, is 
to know phenomena. To know the second, is to know 
who, where, and what man is; is to know, — if not God, 
— yet of God, even in his personality.* 

*■ Wherefore, from the argument of looking into things, it necessarily 
follows that some such opinion as this should be entertained by genu- 
ine philosophers, so that they speak among themselves as follows : — 
" A by-path, as it were, seems to lead us on in our researches under- 
taken by reason, because, as long as we are encumbered with the 
body, and our soul is contaminated with such an evil, we can never 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 21 

Let us understand first of the physical man. 

By what is termed vivisectional study it is that the 
scientist is brought to the recognition of the existence 
in nature of the force which we have termed excitability. 
Of this force, as of the blood, he is led to perceive that 

fully attain to what we desire ; and this we say in truth. For the body 
subjects us to innumerable hindrances on account of its necessary 
support ; and, moreover, if any diseases befall us, they impede us in our 
search after that which is ; and it fills us with longings, desires, fears, 
all kind of fancies, and a multitude of absurdities, so that, as it is said 
in real truth, by reason of the body it is never possible for us to make 
any advance in wisdom. For nothing else but the body and its 
desires occasion wars, seditions, and contests ; for all wars amongst us 
arise on account of our desire to acquire wealth ; and we are compelled 
to acquire wealth on account of the body being enslaved to its service ; 
and, consequently, on all these accounts we are hindered in the pur- 
suit of philosophy. But the worst of all is, that if it leaves us any 
leisure, and we apply ourselves to the consideration of any subject, it 
constantly obtrudes itself in the midst of our researches, and occasions 
trouble and disturbance, and confounds us so that we are not able by 
reason of it to discern the truth. It has then in reality been demon- 
strated to us that if ever we are to know anything purely, we must be 
separated from the body, and contemplate the things themselves by 
the mere soul. And then, as it seems, we shall obtain that which we 
desire, and which we profess ourselves to be lovers of, wisdom; when 
we are dead, as reason shows, but not while we are alive. For if it 
is not possible to know anything purely in conjunction with the body, 
one of these two things must follow : either that we can never acquire 
knowledge, or only after we are dead ; for then the soul will subsist 
by itself, separate from the body, but not before. And while we live, 
we shall thus, as it seems, approach nearest to knowledge if we hold 
no intercourse or communion at all with the body except what abso- 
lute necessity requires, nor suffer ourselves to be polluted by its 
nature, but purify ourselves from it, until God himself shall relieve us. 
And thus being pure, and freed from the folly of body, we shall in 
all likelihood be with others like ourselves, and shall of ourselves 
know the whole real essence, and that probably is truth ; for it is not 
allowable for the impure to attain to the pure." — PLATO : Phcedo. 



2 2 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

in man there is just so much, and, like unto the blood, 
that it is harmonious and proportionable in its disposi- 
tion. This vis vitce is a correlating essence or thing, 
and is, consequently, allied with matter ; it is not, pure 
piite, the man, but, like as the blood, the muscles, the 
brain, is, ex Jure, the common property of all things. 
The correlating of this vis vitce differs in no respect, 
save in manner, from the principle acting to the con- 
version of heat into steam, and steam into momentum, 
and momentum back again into heat. And the life 
itself differs not in kind from that which is the cohesive 
force of a weed. We have become too learned not to 
have discovered the fallacy of the "spirit" of Galen 
and of Aristotle ; and although we recognize no less 
to-day than was affirmed in the times of these philoso- 
phers, and by Thales and Anaximenes and Diogenes, 
that the something in the right side of the heart is dif- 
ferent from that in the left, yet we know what these 
savants did not, — that the air which arterializes the 
systemic fluid is not more truly spirit, or life, than are 
the mushrooms of the dunghill entering into the venous 
circulation. Life is a phenomenon, — an expression ; 
this, and nothing more. What, then, we term the vis 
vitce is to have from us no more respect, nor is it less 
an anatomico-physiological thing than is a bone or 
muscle or a brain-cell. As physicists, we consider it 
physiologically, and through the shackles in which we 
thus hold it may we direct and circumvent, to an extent, 
its vagaries, as do we influence the blood in its inflani- 
matory perversions.* 

*• Force, as described by Mr. Tyndall, — see " Fragments of Science," 
— appeals to us but as expression of this entity, not the entity itself. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 23 

We are to assume, then, and from the self-evidence 
of the fact, the existence within the human system, as 
of life at large, of a component, or thing, which we 
know as excitability. To know what this excitability 
is, naturally suggests itself as the study underlying all 
of physical life. But may man, even as the philosopher, 
essay to seek an origin of this principle or element 
outside of the one word, God ? We are not yet able to 
reverse the axiom of Spinoza, and to assert that the 
knowledge of cause is deducible from the knowledge of 
effect ; neither are we at all assisted as physiologists in 
associating physical life with soul, or in resting on the 
assertion that it is of God, that God is natiira naturans. 
God is life, but life is law; and the law of the vis vita. 
is, and must be, as plain and comprehensible as the law 
of the revolutions of the wheel. We are only not yet, 
however, able to read such law. On its expressions, 
therefore, are we compelled to depend for all we may 
yet know of it. We are, with Schelling, to apprehend 
where we cannot prove. Force is, and has been, the 
problem of the ages. That, however, it is an entity 
existing in nature, as does matter, and is a common 
property, seems placed beyond dispute. Let us con- 
sider an illustration which seems irrefutable. As a meal 



Magnetism, electricity, crystallization, are phenomena, and are explain- 
able — in a sense — in law; but the "subtle essence" is a something 
in which the law itself has origin ; it is — shall we say ? — a noumenon, 
and law is a phenomenon. The beautiful expressions of law, so 
beautifully told by Mr. Tyndall, must be seen to deal, not with the 
actual force, but only with that which grows out of it. Molecular 
change produces not force, but force produces molecular change. 
Mechanical power is not abstract force, — not the materia vitce diffusa. 



24 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



of meat has in it the least departure from the moving 
muscle, — that is, as it is eaten in the state nearest 
approaching rawness, — so is found in it most of stimu- 
lation, i.e. excitability. As the same meat is subjected 
to fire, so is excitability driven from it, until, if burned 
to a crisp, no life remains, and the meat, however 
heartily partaken of, yields no restoration of that force 
which, with the matter, is constantly passing away 
from living bodies. Putrid meat is that out of which 
has departed the vis vitcB, and putrid meat is not found 
to nourish. The fowl hung out for the taint may be 
eaten of abundantly, and may be so partaken of because 
of the much demanded to meet the requirements of the 
system, and this from the fact of the diminished life 
that is in it. The same limitation which must find 
compensation in quantity may be remarked in the use 
of blubber by the Esquimaux. Adipose tissue is of low 
organization, i.e. of little vitality; therefore must the 
alimentary viscera be stuffed, that the needed force may 
be gotten from the fat. 

Let another illustration be found in our emplopiient 
of water. This fluid varies in the vital force found in 
it, as do all other vehicles of life. A mountain spring, 
fresh from the influences which have surcharged it, 
satisfies with limited draught. The water of the ditch, 
on the contrary, warm and robbed of excitability, may 
only quench thirst when drunk to engorgement. The 
first has a fullness of spirit, and quickly yields it to 
higher aflinities ; the second possesses little, and, if let 
alone in the ditch, would shortly have become deprived 
even of that little, and would have putresced. 

Force, then, — spirit, the philosopher calls it, — we are 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 25 

to accept as the vivifying principle. As such force 
exists in a man in correlative fullness, he lives ; as it 
diminishes in him, so he proportionably dies. Ample 
illustration of this, as fact, is found in the matter proper, 
as we recognize it, of the body. In what we term the 
physiological state, we find the act of life-renewal a 
perfect process : the organism is maintained in its in- 
tegrity. In sickness, correlation is deranged, the circle 
is broken, and that matter which is constantly passing 
from the body is not replaced by that which, in the 
normal life, is continuously coming to it : hence the 
wasting, the decrease j it is the classic legend of the 
pelican repeating itself: the bird feeding its offspring 
with its own body, having in its turn no nourishment. 

Excitability — i.e. the vis vitcB, the vitalizing prin- 
ciple — is not to be confounded with nerve-matter, or 
nerve-expression, or with the sanguineous system, or 
with any special relation ; it is a something in itself — 
in abstracto : negatively, however, is it easily recogniz- 
able in its goings and comings from organic tissue, first 
in its existence, as seen, say, in the muscular sense of a 
living bullock ; then in its complete absence from flesh 
we call putrescent. In the meat of the shambles we see 
that extent, relation, and conjunctive quantity of it 
which is the mean between that which pertains to mov- 
ing life and disintegrative death : in other words, we see 
in the meat the relation between spirit and matter, in 
that the law of the transformations and transmigrations 
of the one is the common law of both. The Greeks, 
in their doctrine of metempsychosis, had caught a 
symbol of the great law of correlation. They made the 
mistake, however, of confounding the soul of a man 

3 



2 6 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

with the spirit of life, and thus the doctrine found 
negation in its unrecognized fallacy. If, however, the 
analogies of physiology be truths, then is it truth to 
affirm that the spirit of a man lives in an eternal trans- 
migration, passing from man to the polyp, and from the 
polyp back to man ; to-day animating the matter of a 
king, to-morrow wriggling in the maggot which has 
its existence in the king's corpse; constant is force to 
no one thing, true is it to everything. ^'Nature," as 
Berkeley has it, ''is spirit visible; spirit is Nature 
invisible. ' ' 

The matter of the body which we know as man is a 
simple conjunction of vitalized particles. By vitalized 
particles we understand — employing that every-day lan- 
guage here most fitting — the dust of the earth conjoined 
with the principle just spoken of as force, as spirit, vis 
vitcB, excitability. Let us express ourselves in an illus- 
tration. Without dust, — earth, grass grows not; in earth 
grass develops. The passing cow, hungry and lean, 
eats of this grass, and soon her sides bulge with fatness, 
and from her before milkless udder runs the lacteal life 
in streams. The babe, emaciated and dying, drinks 
of this milk, and suddenly its cheeks grow rosy and 
its chin dimples. Milk-nourished, it grows to man- 
hood, waxes old, and in turn passes away, and in the 
earth wherein we lay the body we perceive the form 
turn to dust : into that, whence it came, has it gone 
back. This is the history of matter. 

That which, by misnomer, we call man — the body — 
is to be accepted, then, as a simple combination of par- 
ticles. By analysis the anatomist takes apart this body, 
and, step by step, stage by stage, resolves it into that 



THINKERS AND THINJUNG, 



27 



whence it came. Then, taking this dust, his learned 
brother physicist, the physiologist, through synthesis, 
step by step, stage by stage, reconverts the crude mate- 
rial into man, — into the body of man. May any one 
eat, be refreshed, and not understand this ? Matter is 
the common capital of all things, special to no thing j 
the dust of the earth revolves ever in a common circle, 
and accident, not law, directs its combination. The 
same milk, from the same grass, from the same earth, 
correlates itself with equal facility into a calf or into a 
child, as to either use the accident of its employment 
may put it. 

To the unreflecting seems here, in science, a denial 
of the doctrine of resurrection. With such, however, 
lies a great fallacy. As, in reading these pages, one 
shall of necessity see that materialism dies and resur- 
rects itself in pantheism, so as well must he come to 
perceive a distinction between body and the Ego ; a 
distinction which, sooner or later, forces itself upon the 
most positive of positivists. 

To know of the soul of a man is to learn of it through 
exclusion. Plato, we have remarked, describes the soul 
as ''the ideal," being represented by the body; and 
as, in his philosophy, the seeming real is the unreal, 
that which we view as the unreal, "the idea," being 
the true real, it is to be perceived that even in a 
''heathen thinker" is to be discovered the foolish- 
ness of those doubts with which ignorance besets a 
man. 

He who will here turn to that review which has been 
made of the Platonic doctrine, and, having perused 
and comprehended it, will lay down the volume and for 



2 8 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

himself think, may not but perceive that in the ''real 
and the unreal" of the Hellenian, is to be found a 
dispersion of the confusion of the doctrine of bodily 
resurrection. 

Another direction of thought may be sug'gested for 
another direction of thinking. Marriage of a soul with 
a body, says Robert of Melun, '' is not a union of com- 
mon parts, but of different natures." 

''Form," says Thomas of Aquin, "is not person; 
the soul is a form, therefore not person. Moreover, a 
person has the condition of wholeness and complete- 
ness. But the soul is a part ; therefore the soul has 
not the condition of a person." 

The soul, says Aristotle, is an entelechy ; it is that 
something which has the power to clothe itself with the 
expressions of life. 

Shall we recall to the physician the thoughts which 
lose him, as he watches in the foetus the efforts of this 
"entelechy" to cover and to enlarge itself? At three 
months a quivering, almost jelly-like mass shudders as an 
abortion touches it with the softest zephyr of a summer 
night. At forty years the "entelechy" mocks at the 
mountain-waves of an ocean, and lifts itself, that it may 
cast Pelion upon Ossa. 

When a man dies, says Socrates, we perceive that 
a something has gone from him, inasmuch as he is not 
as he was; but the visible part, the body, which is 
exposed to sight, and which we call a corpse, to which 
it appertains to be dissolved, to fall asunder and be dis- 
persed, does not immediately undergo any of those 
affections, but remains for a considerable time, and 
especially so if any one should happen to die with his 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 29 

body in full vigor at an age of corresponding vigor ; for 
when the body has collapsed and been embalmed, as 
those that are embalmed in Egypt, it remains almost 
entire for an incredible length of time ; and some parts 
of the body, even though it does decay, such as the 
bones and nerves, and everything of that kind, are 
nevertheless, as one may say, immortal. Can the soul, 
then, which is invisible, and which goes to another 
place like itself, excellent, pure, and invisible, and 
therefore truly called the invisible world, to the presence 
of a good and wise God, — can this soul of ours, being 
such, and of such a nature, when separated from the 
body, be immediately dispersed and destroyed ? Rather 
is the case this. If it is separated in a pure state, taking 
nothing of the body with it, as not having willingly 
communicated with it in the present life, but having 
shunned it, and gathered itself v/ithin itself, so must it 
depart to be with that which it resembles, the invisible, 
the divine, immortal, and wise. And on its arrival 
there, is not its lot to be happy, free from error, ig- 
norance, fears, wild passions, and all the other evils to 
which human nature is subject ? 

Positivism is that science exhibiting the footprints of 
creation and leading to the creator. Yet Epicurus, in 
his way, was a positivist, and in his positivism found 
not God, — but thus far only got he. ''Except a 
vacuum," he said, ''is there nothing incorporeal; the 
world being matter, force is only an expression of 
molecular change. There may not be, therefore, in 
itself any one thing superior to any other thing ; there 
is no God, no moral law. Pleasure is the fullness of 
living. Virtue is prudent, but only that aside from 



30 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



its practice is there no happiness. Out of nothing may 
come nothing ; therefore must the universe always have 
been." 

Undeveloped positivism is the clogging dross even of 
to-day. Heed for a moment the most modern of its 
fallacies, as enunciated by an English professor. * Force, 
is this savant led to say, is not an expression outside of 
matter, but is a creation of the relation of particles ; 
force is, as is aquosity, the result of combinations. Put 
together, under the required circumstances, atoms of 
oxygen and atoms of hydrogen, and behold a new 
expression, in water ; for thus is the creation of water. 
So, life. Put together in proper proportions proper 
equivalents, and thus must be the birth of the vis vitcn. 
Having got thus far, this scientist, as if suddenly become 
oblivious to the whole argument of his assertion, cor- 
relates his atoms through the presence of a "subtle 
essence" residing in them.f 

" One, plunged in mines, forgets a sun was made." 



•••Huxley's "Physical Basis of Life." Two propositions are pre- 
sented in this lecture : ist. That all organisms, animal and vegetable, 
are alike in all that pertains to force and substance, — a proposition 
that may not be refuted ; 2d. That force and intellectual functions are 
the production of molecular disposition, — a fallacy that has in itself its 
own refutation. 

f He who would see the weakness of Mr. Huxley's deductions as 
developed in his lecture on the " Physical Basis of Life" needs only to 
read that excellent little book "On Protoplasm," by Dr. Lionel Beale ; 
and, if his interest shall lead him further, he will consult with great 
advantage a work of James Hutchinson Sterling, F.R.C.S., LL.D., 
entitled "As regards Protoplasm in Relation to Professor Huxley's 
Essay on the Physical Basis of Life." " Passing on," says Dr. Ster- 
ling, " we see nut uniy tlial proloplasni has, like water, a chemical and 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



31 



Another expression of undeveloped positivism is to 
be seen in what is known as the Darwinian theory of 
progressive development. Commencing the study of 
biology with the variations in species, the naturalist 
Darwin has been led to infer that the account of man's 
creation as given by Moses is an error, finding for him- 
self inferences which please him better, in a law of pro- 
gressive development or physical evolution. To find 
and pursue such a chain of reasoning, this author begins, 
not with Adam, but with the man of to-day, and, 
tracing him backward, discovers him to be an emerge- 
ment from the savage, whom in turn he quickly enough 
has to find the descendant of the anthropoidal apes. 
Pursuing the evolutionary mode of analogies, he loses 
the ape in the lower mammals ; these still, in turn, in 
the reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and so on down 
through the long geological vista, until in the double- 
necked bottle of the ascidian he misses the animal link 
altogether. 

Here a first fallacy would seem to be found in an 
inability on the part of the savant to exhibit in actual 
specimens types in progressive development. He has 
failed to show a single specimen of such intermediate 
forms. Not but what, even in the experience of an 

physical structure, but that, unhke water, it has also an organized or 
organic structure. Now this, on the part of protoplasm, is a possession 
in excess ; and with relation to that excess there can be no grounds 
for analogy. Living protoplasm is identical with dead protoplasm 
only so far as its chemistrj.' is concerned ; and it is quite evident, con- 
sequently, that differences between the two cannot depend on that in 
which they are not identical, — cannot depend on chemistrv. It is 
thus that, lifted high enough, the light of the analogy between water 
and protoplasm is found to go out." 



5s^^aii*a«s? 



32 TIIIXKERS AND THINKING. 

individual, breed may be modified. Our author has 
plainly enough shown this in experiments with birds; 
the cattle-breeder has acted on such premises for gen- 
erations beyond the memory of man ; but as yet has 
no pigeon been changed into a gestating animal, or 
bullock into a bipedal ruminant. Beyond a certain 
point experimentation has resulted always in sterility. 
Besides this, the theory implies a continuing progress- 
iveness. As the physical man is concerned, cycles 
have certainly demonstrated no such advance, and we 
might as well apply it to the soul life. Man advances 
in knowledge, but it has failed to be demonstrated that 
he enlarges in his capacity to receive knowledge. Who 
shall to-day cast the disk farther than the Roman ath- 
lete, or who speak words wiser than Pericles ? 

A law of construction, too, there is, which conflicts 
with the theory as it has application to organism. The 
anatomist demonstrates a fullness of perfection beyond 
which nature may not go without diverging from the 
governing principle. For example, correspondence of 
part with part, and of a part with its requirements. 
The muscular system offers a simple and easily-compre- 
hended illustration. This system exhibits, mathemati- 
cally, maximum force with minimum action. Beyond 
this, then, it is seen that in such direction nature may 
not go. A new type must be produced, or none : per- 
fection is attained.* 

* " Mr. Darwin has perceived various likenesses in dogs and other 
creatures to what men have described as a conscience or moral sense. 
The likenesses are indisputable; but if they are likenesses, what is the 
original? The pattern, by the very hypothesis, must be the higher 
creature. Mr. Darwin would not only be unable to give that which he 



'^^■^m^ 




THINKERS AND THINKING. 



ZZ 



There is a mode of discovering a fallacy, founded on 
association : let us here apply it. The basal truth, the 
law of it, ''Of the dust of the earth is man's body," 
has man in this nineteenth century only come fairly to 
understand. Moses, ages and ages back, told this 
fact : he who to-day denies it does so only to reap 
ridicule. Moses, whose prescience tells us this, asserts 
also the form and principle of the construction. "And 
God said. Let us make man, and in image let him be 
like unto ourselves." In the truth of the first fact, 
"Of the dust of the earth we will make him," science 
has come to concurrence ; it may not prevaricate nor 
doubt. On what principle shall the proven veracity 
and foreknowledge of the first assertion not be ac- 
cepted for the second premise? Then, may the infer- 
ence be adopted, it is at once seen that this scientist 
has fallen into false conclusions ; for should man be an 
evolution from life-type, which, in such system, is traced 
down to the ascidian, then the creative principle — 
the God — the primal — may not be so much as an 
atom which was the first in the system of the nebular 
hypothesis. In other words, Darwinism merges into 
Huxleyism, or, better expressed, into a "crude, un- 
refined, unphilosophic, unscientific materialism," — ex 
hypothesi. 

But let us pass on, that we may see what the thoughts 
of the ages shall teach us. 

Reminded, by the mention falling into a former 



has detected in a dog a name, he would have no perception or dream 
of its nature, if he had not first foimd it in man."— MAURICE : Intro- 
diiction to Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy. 



34 THINKERS AND TIIIXK'IXG. 

page, of Epicurus and the ICi)i(iireans, we may find than 
in this sect no better ilhistration of error, most honest 
in itself, as it exists, and would most naturally grow 
from premises of false signification, — a type, indeed, of 
the differences too common to-day. Yet see the good 
in Epicurism. 

It is quite common to speak of Epicurus as a sensual- 
ist, and of his followers as so many Aristippians, " chil- 
dren of the sun, whose blood is fire. ' ' On the contrary, 
the principles of this school, as indeed also that of the 
Cyrenaic, founded by Aristippus, were, in the sense 
of the age, moral ; the only difference, as we find when 
we come fully to scan the matter, between these i^hi- 
losophers and the Christians who closely follow them, 
being that the one found its truth in a purely human 
aspect, the other has it in what it accepts as divine 
revelation. 

''Pleasure," taught Epicurus, '' constitutes happiness. 
All animals instinctively pursue it, as instinctively all 
avoid pain. What animals do of instinct, man should 
do deliberatively. Every i)leasure is in itself good, 
but, in comparison with another, it may become an 
evil. It is the art of the philosopher to enable him to 
foresee the result of his actions ; and, so foreseeing, he 
is taught to avoid those enjoyments which occasion 
pain, as well as to endure with resolution and satisfac- 
tion discomforts from which grow pleasures. The 
pleasures of the tx)dy are not to be despised, but they 
are as pains when compared with the pleasures of the 
soul. Therefore is it the higher i)leasure to crucify the 
])assi()ns where they conflict witli the asi)irations of the 
luftier life. Simplicity is piefera])le to luxury; for in 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



35 



this is found the prevention of ill-fortune. Temper- 
ance is better than gluttony ; for thus are preserved the 
pleasures of the palate. Free will and reason are in- 
separable, and upon them rests true virtue. Without 
free will reason would be passive, and without reason 
free will would be blind. The study of man is man ; 
not, however, in idle curiosity, that he may see how 
curiously and wonderfully he is wrought ; but that he 
may learn the extent of his capacities, in order properly 
to direct them ; learn of his relation with nature, that 
he may thus place and keep himself in harmony with 
that of which he is a part." 

Soul and spirit were, in the Epicurean philosophy, 
one \ were of the common flux. There was a pleasure of 
the senses, — of the soul ; but all was of the present. For 
man, in his individuality, no immortality existed ; the 
now was the all, and in the now was to be comprised 
every consideration of existence; that which con- 
tributed to the pleasure of the now was the truest and 
highest expression of philosophy. Had the premises 
been right, never had there arisen deductions to sup- 
plant Epicurus. 

Wisely may we stop and cull a page from heathen 
philosophy. 

"Let no one," says Epicurus, in his greeting to 
Menaeceus, "delay to study philosophy while he is 
young, and when he is old let him not weary of the 
study ; for no man can ever find the time unsuitable or 
too late to study the health of his soul. And he who 
asserts that it is not yet time to philosophize, or that 
the hour is passed, is like a man who should say that 
the time is not yet come to be happy, or that it is too 



36 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

late. So that both young and old should study philos- 
ophy, — the one in order that, when he is old, he may 
be young in good things through the pleasing recollec- 
tions of the past ; and the other in order that he may 
be at the same time both young and old, in conse- 
quence of his absence of fear for the future. 

''It is right, then, for a man to consider the things 
which produce happiness, since, if happiness be present, 
we have everything; and when it is absent, we do 
everything with a view to possess it. 

" Accustom yourself also to think death a matter with 
which we are not at all concerned, since all good and 
all evil is in sensation, and since death is only the 
privation of sensation. On which account, the correct 
knowledge of the fact that death is no concern of ours, 
makes the mortality of life pleasant to us, inasmuch as 
it sets forth no illimitable time, but relieves us from the 
longing for immortality. For there is nothing terrible 
in living to a man who rightly comprehends that there 
is nothing terrible in ceasing to live : so that he was a 
silly man who said that he feared death, not because it 
would grieve him when it was present, but because it 
did grieve him while it was future. For it is very 
absurd, that that which does not distress a man when it 
is present should afflict him when only expected. 
Therefore the most formidable of evils, death, is no- 
thing to us, since, when we exist, death is not present 
to us ; and when death is present, then we have no 
existence. It is no concern, then, either of the living 
or of the dead, since to the one it has no existence, and 
the other class has no existence in itself. But people 
in general at times flee from death as the greatest of 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 37 

evils, and at times wish for it as a rest from the evils in 
life. Nor is the not living a thing feared, since living 
is not connected with it ; nor does the wise man think 
not living an evil ; but, just as he chooses food, not 
preferring that which is most abundant, but that which 
is nicest, so too he enjoys time, not measuring it as 
to whether it is of the greatest length, but as to whether 
it is most agreeable. And he who enjoins a young man 
to live well, and an old man to die well, is a simpleton, 
not only because of the constantly delightful nature of 
life, but also because the care to live well is identical 
with the care to die well." 

Again : 

^^ Every pleasure is a good on account of its own 
nature ; but it does not follow that every pleasure is 
worthy of being chosen ; just as every pain is an evil, 
and yet every pain must not be avoided. It is right to 
estimate all things by the measurement and view of 
what is suitable and unsuitable ; for at times we may 
feel the good as an evil, and at times, on the contrary, 
we may feel the evil as good. And we think content- 
ment a great good, not in order that we may never 
have but a little, but in order that, if we have not 
much, we may make use of a little; being genuinely 
persuaded that those men enjoy luxury most completely 
who are the best able to do without it, and that every- 
thing which is natural is easily provided, and what is 
useless is not easily procured. And simple flavors give 
as much pleasure as costly fare, when everything that 
can give pain, and every feeling of want, is removed." 

Again : 

*' Now, the beginning and the greatest good of many 



38 



rillNKERS AND TJIIXKIXG. 



things is prudence ; on ^vhicl■l account prudence is 
something more vakiable than even philosophy, inas- 
much as ail the other virtues spring from it, teaching 
us that it is not possible to live pleasantly unless one 
also lives prudently, and honorably, and justly; and 
one cannot live prudently, and honorably, and justly, 
without living pleasantly ; for the virtues are connate 
with living agreeably, and living agreeably is insepa- 
rable from the virtues. Since, whom can you think 
better than that man who is utterly fearless with respect 
to death, and who has properly contemplated the end 
of nature, and who comprehends that the chief good is 
easily perfected and easily provided, and the greatest 
evil lasts but a short period and causes but brief pain ?' ' 

We go forward. Positivism, the theme of present 
thought, is still another of the synonyms for material- 
ism : the doctrine — accepting and holding to the 
simple definition — ''excludes from philosophy every- 
thing but the natural phenomena or properties of 
knowable things, together with their invariable rela- 
tions of co-existence and succession, as occurring in 
time and space. Such relations are denominated laws, 
which are to be discovered by observation, experiment, 
and comparison." In other words, such a science, 
founded on the expressions of phenomena, seeks here, 
and only here, for that noumenon of which phenomena 
are the expressions. 

With the positivists let our thinking carry us. 

In pantheism — we will not or need not say, in mono- 
theism — is life, is God, is the primal, is all. Let us 
see how quickly positivism loses itself in pantheism. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



39 



Positivism — the positive philosophy — professes to 
open, as we understand it, the illustration, from the 
objective stand-point, of the meaning of life. In its 
true and proper signification it is that aspect of phi- 
losophy which finds the Creator of the world — the Om- 
niscient — the primal — by following the footprints of 
creation. It seeks the origin of life, as geology, one of 
its aspects, seeks the age of life ; as astronomy fixes the 
location of the planets and anticipates by centuries 
the occurrence of an eclipse. It is the religion of the 
scientist, and may only come in its good time to lift 
the veil, — that thick film of ignorance, — which is worse 
than are cataractous eyes for seeing. May effect exist 
without cause, and may science in better way seek a 
cause than through effect? Materialism, positivism — 
recognizing that outside of demonstration must always 
exist confusion, recognizing that discomfort of doubt 
forever associated with proofs purely speculative — de- 
nies for its purpose — for its scientific purpose — reve- 
lation and faith, and passes to the self-proving. No 
surer does the sea — without for certain time boun- 
daries to be seen — lead him who crosses it safely to 
the haven, than must positivism lead to a God, a 
Creator, and a Father. 

But through philosophy God may be found, but by 
the very few : hence the wise advice of the Canter- 
bury archbishop, ''Ask no questions, or ask all ;" hence 
the assertion, "We may pass to the comprehension of 
the possibility of proving, but not to the proof; this 
latter, however, only because of our ignorance : for a 
com_prehension of the materialistic aspect of man, and 
of man's relation with lifCj implies the knowledge of 



40 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

all science, and man is but yet a smatterer in the 
sciences; hence his constant misjudgments and confu- 
sions."* '^ In the present state of things," as suggested 
by Mr. Lewes, ''the domain is composed of two very 
different things, — general ideas and positive science. 
The general ideas are powerless because they are not 
positive ; the positive sciences are powerless because 
they are not general. ' ' 

Educated men are all, to a greater or less extent, 
positivists, that is to say, are materialists, — searchers 
into the secrets of nature. This we may understand in 
Comtism, as in the suggestions of the French sage dates 
that which this term embraces in its most modern accep- 
tation, and because it is of what is called his philosophy 
people commonly speak when discussing positivism. f 

*" There was a time," says the learned Faraday, — answering a 
communication of the British Association for the Advancement of 
Science, concerning electricity, — "when I thought I knew something 
about the matter; but the longer I live, and the more carefully I 
study the subject, the more convinced I am of my total ignorance of 
the nature of electricity." 

f " Philosophy, in the various phases of its history, has always had 
one aim, that of furnishing an explanation of the world, of man, and 
of society ; but it has sought that aim by various routes. To solve the 
problems of existence, and to supply a rule of life, have constituted its 
purpose, more or less avowed. Steady in this purpose, it has been 
vacillating in its means; now borrowing, now rejecting, the principles 
of its rival, theology ; now claiming and now violating the methods of 
science; unwilling to follow either, incapable of advancing alone. 
We have seen it endeavoring to embrace all inquiry ; and seen it 
despair, restricting itself to pyschology, and spite of the manifest 
incompetence of psychology, even were it perfected, to furnish cosmi- 
cal and social theories, — an incompetence more or less recognized by 
metaphysicians, who refused to restrict their wide-sweeping inquiries 
to the mere investigation of human faculties and the conditions of 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



41 



Pantheism is ''God intoxicated:" to it everything 
is God, and without him is there nothing. Positivism, 
if it concerns itself at all about a God, does so ''not 



thought. With the creation of the positive philosophy this vacillation 
ceases. A new era has dawned. For the first time in history, an 
explanation of the world, society, and man, is presented which is 
thoroughly homogeneous and at the same time thoroughly in accord- 
ance with accurate knowledge. Having the reach of an all-embracing 
system, it condenses human knowledge into a doctrine, and co-ordi- 
nates all the methods by which that knowledge has been reached and 
will in future be extended. Its aim is the renovation of society. Its 
basis is science, — the positive knowledge we have attained, and may 
attain, of all phenomena whatever. Its method is the objective method, 
which has justified its supremacy by its results. Its superstructure is 
the hierarchy of the sciences, i.e. that distribution and co-ordination of 
general truths which transform the scattered and independent sciences 
into an organic whole, wherein each part depends on all that precede 
and determines all that succeed. The cardinal distinctions of this 
system may be said to arise naturally from the one aim of making all 
speculation homogeneous. Hitherto theology, while claiming certain 
topics as exclusively its own, even within the domain of knowledge, 
left vast fields of thought untraversed. It reserved to itself ethics and 
history, with occasional excursions into psychology ; but it left all cos- 
mical problems to be settled by science, and many psychological and 
biological problems to be settled by metaphysics. On the other hand, 
science, claiming absolute dominion over all cosmical and biological 
problems, left morals and politics to metaphysicians and theologians, 
with only an occasional and incidental effort to bring these also under 
its sway. Thus, while it is clear that society needs one faith, one doc- 
trine, which shall satisfy the whole intellectual needs ; on the other 
hand, it is clear that such a doctrine is impossible so long as these 
antagonistic lines of thought and these antagonistic modes of investi- 
gation are adopted. vSuch is and has long been the condition of the 
world. A glance suffices to see that there is no one doctrine general 
enough to embrace all knowledge, and sufficiently warranted by expe- 
rience to carry irresistible conviction." — George Henry Lewes : 
History of Philosophy. 

4 



42 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



sentimentally," but in an observation of his works. 
But positivism must lead to i)antheism, or else must 
lead itself out of itself. The positivist, as his learning 
grows and his experiences pass from the shape of a 
world to the vitalization of a nucleated nucleolus, per- 
ceives that in himself or in his objectives may he find 
no creative principle ; he comes to recognize that his 
studies embrace phenomena, not causes ; and so at 
length, unconsciously it may be, he finds himself lost 
in pantheism — or, in the dark. 

Positivism, as understood in the sense of Comtism, 
means more, however, than the purely scientific defini- 
tion given of it. It means, or attempts to mean, social 
evolution, and is thus to be described as a " combination 
of certain doctrines of Fourier, of St. Simon, and of 
Hegel. ' ' The author of the modern positive philosophy 
is esteemed to be Auguste Comte, a French gentleman, 
born in 1798, and who died, after a life of unrest and 
disquiet, in 1857, and who seems to have demonstrated 
truly and well in his own career that any doctrine that 
teaches one to rest too exclusively on self and in self 
may not but end in gloom and in a sense of weary error. 
But positivism is older than Comte; older than St. 
Simon, whose friend and student Comte once was ; 
older than Aristotle, even. Thales was a positivist, all 
the Ionic thinkers were positivists; and Huxley is a 
positivist, and so are a host of modern people with 
whose reflections we are every day meeting, — very 
famous people, many of them, — dwellers in a kind of 
grand and distant obscurity. Let us know of these, if 
only to see that when understood they are not so very 
unlike the people who wonder at them. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



43 



Comte was precocious. ''At the age of twelve he 
had absorbed all that the Lycee prescribed in the way of 
instruction. At the age of seventeen he was admitted 
to the Ecole Polytechnique, and there he was brought 
into contact with republican sentiments and scientific 
tendencies eminently suited to his rebellious and inquir- 
ing disposition. By the time he was fourteen he is 
supposed to have entirely disengaged himself from all 
royalist and all theological opinions ; and he was occu- 
pied with the writings which in the eighteenth century 
discussed the fundamental axioms of social, ethical, and 
religious systems. Expelled from his college for insub- 
ordination, Paris allured him. In vain were the threats 
and remonstrances of his troubled parents ; in vain their 
refusal to give him a penny if he quitted his native city 
without an assured position. The desire for freedom 
and the manifold attractions of the great intellectual 
centre were all-powerful ; and he found himself lonely 
in the crowded capital, ready to begin that eternal 
struggle in which year after year so many noble intel- 
lects, equipped with nothing but a little knowledge and 
an immense ambition, fight for bread and distinction, 
are wounded and worsted, are wounded and conquer. 

' ' Not one of the class who founder on the sunken 
rocks of Paris, Comte w^ent manfully to work to supply his 
humble wants ; and humble they were ; for he required 
little more than bread. Giving lessons in mathematics, 
he found pupils through the influence of two illustrious 
men, — Poinsot, who had been a professor at the Ecole 
Polytechnique, and De Blainville, who early recognized 
his philosophical calibre. Among his pupils was the 
Prince de Carignan. In 1818 Comte went to live with 



44 



TIIIXA'EJ^S AND THINKING, 



the celebrated St. Simon, a philosopher who is credited 
with giving bias to his future life. 

*' At the age of twenty, familiar wdth all the inor- 
ganic sciences, well read in history, fervent in repub- 
licanism, and ambitious of mastering the great laws of 
social existence, this inheritor of the eighteenth-cen- 
tury spirit, regarding philosophy and science as the 
instruments for the dissolution of what he deemed theo- 
logical superstitions and feudal inequalities, came into 
affectionate and reverential contact with one whom 
some regard as a turbulent charlatan, and others, as a 
prophetic thinker ; one who, at any rate, was impressed 
with what seemed to him the urgent need and possi- 
bility of replacing a critical and destructive tendency 
by a positive and constructive tendency ; and the im- 
mediate consequence of this contact was, that Comte 
learned to look upon the revolutionary work as com- 
pleted, and saw that the effort of the nineteenth cen- 
tury must be towards the reconstruction of society upon 
a new basis. 'The old faith,' said Comte, and as re- 
peat some of his followers, ' is destroyed ; a new faith 
is indispensable.' "* 

For the purposes of our thinking we may here wisely 
make a digression. 

Impressed is it, on the common mind of to-day, that 
there exists, and always has existed, antagonism between 
science and theology. This impression is not without 
certain foundation ; and, moreover, passing back to 



•;■:■ We give to Comte the advantage of the description of his great 
admirer, Mr. Lewes, whose " History of Philosophy" seems impressed 
on every page with Comtism. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



45 



what is known as the scholastic age, it would seem to 
be that such antagonism has arisen, not in science, but 
in theology. Indeed, it impresses itself upon the un- 
derstanding that from the lap of the church has grown 
the so-called infidelity of the world. 

The craving of the intellectual man is for truth. To 
man, as of finite relation, self-demonstrable truth is to 
be found alone in the direction of positive research, — 
materialism ; but, as was long ago pronounced by Plo- 
tinus, in his Alexandrian Dialectics, there is of man 
more than the finite ; therefore does he not seem able 
to confine his thoughts to the positive, but in the 
purely materialistic is he forever catching glimpses of 
the pantheistic. The hand of a worker must be in the 
work. The positivists of the Epicurean, the Comtian, 
and, let us add, — that we may bring it into closer fa- 
miliarity, — of the Huxley school, confound the work 
and the hand, seeing no hand apart from the work, 
and no work apart from the hand. Positivists of wider 
outlook, however, see the distinction, and in lost won- 
der follow to their unfolding the ''dicta probantia," 
the long-hid mysteries of creation.* 



* Dr. Georget, author of the well-known " Physiologie du Systeme 
Nerveux," presents us, in his own professions, with the misconcep- 
tion and misuse of the word materialism. In his volume he openly 
professes materialism, — the French sense, — but, pursuing his investiga- 
tions in the direction of somnambuhsm, he becomes so impressed with 
the existence of a something beyond the chemistry and mechanics of 
matter, that he stops short, and adds to his will a codicil expressing 
his conviction " of the existence within us, and without us, of an intel- 
ligent principle, differing entirely from any material existence." Dr. 
Georget had committed the mistake of confounding matter, force, and 
soul. 



46 THIXKERS AND THINKING, 

*'As a man respects himself," says an axiom, "so 
does he find respect." Theology, not seeming to 
comprehend the dignity it represented, stepped from a 
pedestal of lofty eminence to destroy wreaths which 
were in process of growth for its own crown, and 
which, in fruition, must of necessity have come to it. 
Do we say theology ? Perhaps this may be wrong : we 
may confound a thing with its representative. 

Every worker in the arcana of life is a theologian, and 
is so necessarily, because the central truth of life is 
God, and the study of life is the study of the Theos. 
In such fold must, therefore, of necessity be accepted 
and embraced all men who recognize and acknowledge 
a primary entity, — the something which is, in itself, 
life. That from the various points of outlook God is 
seen different, makes (as the logic of the fact is con- 
cerned) no difference. Positivism, we must see, loses 
itself in pantheism, and so loses itself because it comes 
to be exhibited to the learned that matter, without 
spirit, is incapable of creative transubstantiation ; that 
spirit may not be of its own direction the co-ordina- 
tive intelligence; that it is not of itself, but that it 
has an ulterior. With the positive, therefore, has the 
materialist to do. God is in every molecule. With 
the ultej'ior has the church deemed itself best ac- 
quainted, and, overlooking the aspects of a science 
which contains all of life, has unwisely or unthinkingly, 
as it might seem, denounced where it should have co- 
worked or led. We may easily demonstrate this. 

Theology rises from theosophism, as rises from its 
root the trunk of a tree. Theology is a trunk of many 
branches. Of these branches might be mentioned, 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 47 

first, moral theology ; second, natural theology ; third, 
revealed theology; fourth, scholastic theology; fifth, 
speculative theology. 

Moral theology is a department which has to do with 
the relations of man to God. It treats of what it 
denominates the divine law, i.e. of the duties, cares, 
and responsibilities devolved by the Creator on the 
created. 

Natural theology is a department in which man seeks 
a knowledge of his Creator through his work. It is 
materialism. Scientists are all workers in this branch. 

Revealed theology is that which is inferred to be the 
direct revelations to man of God's will. Pulpit theol- 
ogy has heretofore limited itself quite exclusively to 
this branch. 

Scholastic theology is a branch of many branchlets. 
It refers more particularly to views of various scholas- 
tics, and has been accepted as confining itself to the 
subjective methods. Abelard, whose relations with 
Heloise, rather than his philosophy, keep green his 
memory, was a scholastic. Scholasticism is a philos- 
ophy which had its relation with that transitional 
period in which ancient philosophy had yielded in its 
weakness, and theology had not yet taken its place, 
a period ^^the peculiarity of which was the struggle 
of reason to assert and justify her independence." To 
scholasticism, says Lewes, who strangely expresses him- 
self, ''we owe the emancipation of philosophy; it was 
the only possible solvent of theology. The work of 
the schools, however, is done. Their folios are fos- 
sils,' monstrous and lifeless shapes of a former world. 
Having little community with the life of our own, they 



48 THINKERS AXD TIIIXKING. 

have for ns an interest similar to that yielded by the 
megatherium and the dinornis. We are no longer per- 
plexed by their problems, but we are interested in the 
fact that their problems did once perplex the most 
eminent minds." 

Scholastic theology represents a phase in which the- 
ology, as anciently understood, — that is, before the 
time of Johannes Scotus Erigena, the bold and subtle 
disputant of the court of Charles the Bald, a.d. 850, — 
having failed to solve the capital problems, attempted 
the solution by metaphysics. In other words, that 
progressiveness of evolution, which to-day is looking 
God-ward through telescope and microscope, dissatis- 
fied with the evident fallacies of traditional teachings, 
which time and knowledge had come to expose, lacking 
the leading-strings of the positivism of a still unrecog- 
nized biology, sought to find a justification of faith in 
reason. In this it really opposed the church, for 
Rome asks no such support, but claims adherence in 
faith alone. A single passage from Erigena presents 
the aspect of the scholastic : " The Holy Fathers speak 
to us in tradition. In them is there no reason, save by 
accident, for that which they speak is of faith, and 
not of deduction. Therefore are we not to adduce 
the opinions of the Fathers save when necessary to 
strengthen reasoning in the eyes of men, who, unprac- 
ticed in reasoning, yield rather to authority than to 
logic. The safety of faithful souls consists in believing 
that which there is reason for affirming, and in com- 
prehending that which there is reason for believing. ' ' 

That reason was the highest guide, higher than faith, 
is thus affirmed by Erigena: ''Thou art not ignorant 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



49 



that that which is first in nature is of greater dignity 
than that which is first in time. Reason is the first in 
nature, and authority in time. For although nature 
was created together witli time, authority did not begin 
to exist from the beginning of nature and time. But 
reason has arisen with nature and time from the be- 
ginning of things. Reason itself teaches this. For 
authority no doubt hath proceeded from reason, but 
reason not by any means from authority. And all 
authority which is not approved by true reason turns 
out to be weak. But true reason, seeing that it stands 
firm and immutable, protected by its own virtues, 
needs not to be strengthened by any confirmation of 
authority. True authority, indeed, seems nothing but 
truth united by the power of reason, and transmitted in 
letters by the Holy Fathers for the benefit of posterity. ' ' 

Scholasticism was not, as is seen, an improvement 
on the faith of the church, for it depended on reason 
unassisted by experiment ; and reason is so fallible that 
metaphysics, even now, is a byword. But this did 
scholasticism : it opened the way to doubt and to dis- 
cussion, **It led, eventually, Galileo to break the bonds 
of Aristotle, and to appeal to the umpirage of widest 
experiment, and to dare the publication of his fa- 
mous Dialogues on the Ptolemaic and Copernican sys- 
tems. It gave a new impetus to the positive sciences. 
Scholasticism rose, dimmed the glory of an austere, 
prejudiced, ignorant church, and then, its work done, 
gave way to the rising sun of science. ' ' 

Scholasticism, to be fully understood, must be studied 
with that which preceded and that which has come after 
it. It is scarcely to be called a philosophy j at least is 



50 IVILVA'EKS AND THINKING. 

it not more deserving such a title than is its modern 
successor, positivism. It had its origin in the doubting 
minds of learned and thinking discoverers. Thus, as 
an example, Galileo in his declaration ''E pur se 
muove' ' was scholastic in his expression of a truth not 
held by the church. Bruno was scholastic when, defy- 
ing the cry ''La messe ou la mort," he maintained the 
doctrines of his teachers, Pythagoras, Plato, and Plo- 
tinus. Scholasticism began of small and humble stature 
and pretensions ; it was suggestive, not defiant. Thus 
three stages or phases are recognized : i. " That which 
was marked by the absolute subordination of philosophy 
to theology, that is, to authority;" 2. ''That which 
was marked by the friendly alliance of philosophy with 
dogmatic theology ;" 3. " The commencement of a sep- 
aration between the two, or the dawn of the entire 
independence of philosophy."* 

Up to what are termed the middle ages, that is, up 
to the ninth century, the church claimed and maintained 
spiritual supremacy, aiming at the construction of society 
on a purely spiritual basis. " Opposed as it was," says 
Lewes, "to this world, striving to regulate this life 
with a view to the life to come, its other-worldlijiess, 
while upholding an ideal before men's eyes, had the 
disadvantage of discrediting the real. Profane knowl- 
edge was, therefore, doubly despised ; it was despised 
because it related to things of this world, and it was 
despised because it gave no insight into the next. It 
was dreaded even more than it was despised ; dreaded 
because it claimed a share in the government of men's 

* Krauth's Fleming. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



51 



minds. The church was dominant ; and theology in all 
respects opposed the development of the intellect and 
the enlargement of knowledge. ' ' The mind of the world 
— the outlook — was growing ; it was inevitable that new 
truths should be discovered and their reality demon- 
strated ; knowledge might not, could not, be confined 
or restrained. Men asked themselves of the things they 
saw, and these things told them new stories.* 

But the church denied new truths. Her dominion was 
the dominion of the Rome she succeeded. "Valuable," 
as suggests Mr. Lewes, ''to discipline, but less valuable 
to culture. " / ' The church, both by instinct and precept, 
was opposed to science and to literature. The great 
benefits, however, which she conferred on humanity 
can be denied only by a narrow philosophy ; but her 
benefits were not unalloyed ; and the disastrous influence 
she exercised on letters and science may be estimated by 
the simple fact that, during the nine centuries of her 
undisputed dominion, not a single classic writer, not a 



■* A true observer sees it somewhat difficult to find over-much fault 
with such conservatism. Example all-sufficient is found in the perse- 
cution of Roger Bacon by his brother Franciscans. There was much 
that was true and good in what the physics of the friar affirmed ; but 
there was also much that was untrue and which was not good. The 
data of the sage may be likened to the data of the phrenologist of 
to-day, being an intermingling of the real and the unreal. Who, 
however, but the anatomist may separate this true and false of the 
phrenologist? Considering the state of society and the condition of 
education, we may scarcely see what otherwise the prudent Clement 
was to do but to enjoy the Opus Majus in the secrecy of his library. 
"No man," said one of the doctors of the Sorbonne, " ought to read 
the Holy Scriptures before he has learned philosophy and taken his 
degree in arts." 



52 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



single discoverer whose genius enlarged the intellectual 
horizon, not a single leader of modern thought, arose to 
dignify her reign." However, the church was a power 
not fearlessly to be resisted. William of Champeaux, 
and Abelard, might not debate under the shadow of 
St. Peter, as might Plato and Aristotle in the atmosphere 
of the academic grove ; therefore had the scholastic no 
resource, no desire perhaps, but to engraft his thoughts 
with those of his church. Hence scholasticism in its 
first era, — its absolute subordination to theology. But 
this alliance with and subordination to theology, which 
Mr. Lewes unwisely considers the fatal weakness of 
scholasticism, constitutes, as he finds himself compelled 
of necessity to admit, its value as an agent in the evol- 
ution of thought. *'For if," says he, "reason was to 
exercise its prerogative in a society governed by a 
church, nothing but such an issue as scholasticism could 
be permitted it. The dogmas were fixed. The solu- 
tions were found. Nothing remained for research ex- 
cept, the reconciliation of these dogmas with reason. 
A new solution would have been a heresy. Philosophers 
were allowed to seek new routes ; but they were not 
allowed to arrive at new conclusions. ' ' 

Doubts, however, are as wedges : they split where 
allowed to find entrance. The dogmas felt the entering 
and sundering force, and, unable to resist, sought safety 
in alliance. The first period, commencing with Erigena, 
closed two hundred years later with the fierce and irre- 
sistible reasoning of Abelard. 

The second period introduces Albertus Magnus, 
Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus. These might be 
termed the great wranglers of the thirteenth century. 



THINKERS AND THINKING, 



53 



They were all monks and in accord with the church. 
Albertus Magnus, "Albert le Grand/' was in young 
life a friar of the Dominican order, being, in 1254, a 
provincial of the order. In 1260 he was Bishop of 
Ratisbon. He is famed for his knowledge, his modesty, 
and for a noble and disinterested spirit. The extent of 
his independence of church theology may be understood 
by a single paragraph. " Whenever," he says, "divine 
things are touched on, faith must predominate over 
reason, authority over argument." He disseminated, 
however, unconsciously, skeptical impressions, by his 
peculiar manner of stating propositions. His mode was 
to suggest objections to the dogmas, leaving them, vir- 
tually, for the church to answer. 

Thomas Aquinas, surnamed from his remarkable 
amiability and exemplary life " the Angelic Doctor, ' ' 
has been deemed worthy of being pronounced the most 
eminent of all the scholastics. He became a pupil of 
Albertus Magnus at the age of sixteen, and so wonder- 
ful were his attainments that at an early period of his 
life he was celebrated over all Europe. Born of noble 
family, he was insusceptible to the glamour of prefer- 
ment, and, steadily refusing all advancement, spent his 
life in philosophical contemplation and investigation. 
He left behind him, as the expression of his life, a work 
entitled " Summa Theologise.""^ 

'■•A work worthy of all commendation, from the broadness of its 
outlook, giving the life and thoughts of St. Thomas, and the comparison 
of this life and these thoughts with the lives and thoughts of other 
thinkers, is found in " The Life and Labors of St. Thomas of Aquin, 
by the Very Rev. Roger Bede Vaughn, O.S.B. London : Longmans & 
Co." "A man," says Father Vaughn, " endowed with the character- 
istic notes of the three great fathers of Greek philosophy, he possessed 



54 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

Duns Scotus was a fellow of Merton College, and a 
Franciscan friar. So famous did he become in meta- 
physics as to be surnamed *' the Subtle." He founded 
a new school, called the Scotists. These were rivals to 
the Thomists, or disciples of Aquinas, a rivalry kept up 
for centuries. 

The third period may be called the Baconian, suc- 
ceeded by the nominalistic. It represents the separation 
of positivism from theology, and is, to an extent, the un- 
happy condition (as it might not inaptly be termed) of 
to-day, — mutual co-workers separated and denouncing 
each other, where both profess to have in view, as a com- 
mon object, the comprehension of truth ; in other words, 



the intellectual honesty and precision of Socrates, the analytical keen- 
ness of Aristotle, and the yearning after wisdom and light which was 
the distinguishing mark of ' Plato the divine.' " 

A beautiful and most true picture does the father thus draw : 
" The Stagyrite himself, with his piercing intellect, who is so match- 
less while dealing with secular philosophy, when he attempts to soar 
up to the Divinity, staggers as if struck by the hand of God, or proves 
himself little better than a clumsy charlatan. Something beyond 
natural keenness and cultivated sagacity is required in one who would 
deal successfully with the supernatural world of grace and glory. 
Before rising into this finer atmosphere, the soul must be steeped in 
supernatural light, and comforted by an element more potent far 
than the strongest flame of an active intellect ; in fact, an angelic 
man, leading a stainless life, almost as if he had never suffered a 
taint in nature, alone would be capable of receiving into his spirit 
and of drawing out before the world the vast and complicated 
scheme of the Divine economy, and the typical figure of what a man 
should be." Among other passages from the life of the saint, which 
exhibit the modesty and humility begotten of great learning, is the 
famous reply, to Reginald, who insists that he shall do further work : 
" I cannot, cannot, Reginald; for what I have already written seems 
but so much rubbish." 



THINKERS AXD THINKING. 



55 



it is a conflict between revealed and natural theology, 
the clashing of the branches of a common stem. 

Speculative theology might be expressed as the poet- 
ical outlook into nature. All men are more or less 
speculative. Therefore may it imply no system, because 
speculation implies drifting. We might call it meta- 
physical theology; that is, it is the study of God 
which follows after the materialistic ; it is what is 
called ontology. As natural theology is the study of 
God through his works, — physics, — so speculative the- 
ology is to be described as the searching after God 
through soul-reflection : it is the ecstasy of Plotinus, — 
soul studying soul. 

Mankind, as is observed of all, will think, will in- 
vestigate ; to restrain the progressiveness of thought is 
to restrain the whirlwind ; as all things are of God, so 
all study, all investigation, must pertain to God. The 
church, seeming to overlook that all thought must find 
itself in a common circle, denounced where, it now 
appears, it should have supported and encouraged ;* it 

*This tendency to unwise and unnecessary judgment by the church 
is happily expressed by Dr. Manning, in his book, " Half Truths and. 
the Truth." " Great harm was done," suggests this writer, " when 
the church condemned, as of infidel tendency, some of the earlier 
astronomical discoveries. We stand now amazed that the fathers of 
the church should make themselves a tribunal to judge the Coper- 
nican theory, and that they should proceed to condemn it, declaring 
it to be a damnable heresy. Not that Copernicus himself was thus 
condemned. Being one of the devoutest men of his times, living 
amidst powerful friends, who wisely guarded his reputation, and not 
publishing his great discovery till just as he died, he escaped ecclesi- 
astical censure. It was reserved for his follower Galileo, in the next 
century, to bear the Papal condemnation; by which his name has been 



56 IJILVA'ERS AND THINKING. 

seemed, indeed, to lack that faith which should have 
taught the propriety of a dignified waiting until the 
new thinker, be he who or what he might, should find 
himself, willingly or unwillingly, following in the com- 
mon round, — for if it seemed that one was striding 
farther and farther away, it was only a little time that 
each step was to bring him nearer and nearer. Has not 
the most positive of positivisms shown this? Where is 
the analysis that has discovered the vis vitce ? where the 
synthesis that has created it ? 

lifted up as an everlasting warning to theologians not to make their 
own ignorance a throne of judgment, from which to hurl anathemas 
at the novelties of science and philosophy. Yet that warning has not 
been always heeded. The blunder of those Romish doctors was 
repeated even so late as the present century, when the theories of geol- 
ogists began to challenge attention. How many students of the new 
science were thus repelled from what they mistook as the narrowness 
and bigotry of Christianity, until they became open opposers of the 
church and its teachings, we shall know only in the day of the revela- 
tion of all things. It is not these denunciatory champions, who seem 
to be born with the scent of religious error in their nostrils, that Chris- 
tianity needs. They do much harm to the sacred cause. Such men, 
rather, as Thomas Chalmers, are our examples. When the minis- 
ters of Scotland were beginning to raise their hue and cry against 
geology, he exclaimed, ' This is a false alarm. The writings of 
Moses do not fix the antiquity of the globe. If they fix anything at 
ail, it is only the antiquity of the species.' These words — these very 
common-sense words, let us add — produced a revolution, and pre- 
vented a revolution. They were caught up, and shouted throughout 
the United Kingdom, till geologists saw they had no cause to rebel 
against the church, and the church saw she had no occasion for denounc- 
ing geology. It was this stand which made Chalmers the champion at 
once both of the church and the new science. From that time forth, 
geology was mainly a Christian science in Great Britain; whence, 
but for that very common-sense utterance and leadership, it would, 
from all that now appears, have speedily fallen into infidel hands." 



THINKERS AND THINKING, 



57 



Exhibiting that all studies are comprised in one 
common study, we come back and follow the so-called 
infidelity of the world ; that is, that which, we may be 
pardoned in thinking, the church fails to lead the 
people rightly to look upon and to understand. A 
church — the church — is infallible, but leaders are not 
necessarily the same. 

Auguste Comte, in his "Philosophic Positive," thus 
exposes the system: "The first characteristic of the 
positive philosophy is that it regards all phenomena as 
subjected to invariable natural laws. Our business is," 
he says, "seeing how vain is any research into what 
are called causes, whether first or final, to pursue an ac- 
curate discovery of these laws, with a view of reducing 
them to the smallest number. Our positive method 
of connecting phenomena is by one or other of two 
relations, — that of similitude or that of succession ; the 
mere fact of such resemblance or succession being all 
that we can pretend to know, and all that we need to 
know. For this perception comprehends all knowledge, 
which consists in elucidating something by something 
else ; in now explaining and now foreseeing certain 
phenomena by means of the resemblance or sequence 
of other phenomena. If we regard these functions [of 
the mind] under their statical aspect, that is, if we 
consider the conditions under which they exist, we 
must determine the organic circumstances of the case, 
which inquiry involves it with anatomy and physiology. 
If we look at the dynamic aspect, we have to study 
simply the exercise and results of the intellectual powers 
of the human race, which is neither more nor less than 
the general object of the positive philosophy." 

5 



58 TIJIXKERS AXD THINKING. 

The history of the thinkers and of the thinking we 
are to consider will be found the most easily compre- 
hended if divided into three eras, — three eras into which 
indeed it divides itself, — the thinkers and the thinking 
of the ancient age, of the medieval, and of these modern 
days. " The ancient," as remarked by Dr. Kraiith, the 
learned professor of philosophy, "moved in the sphere 
of the senses, and tried to construct by their aid a 
philosophy of the visible world. The philosophy of the 
middle ages, full of religious ardor, devoted itself to 
divine and spiritual things. Interpreting the most 
heavenly utterances by the most earthly canons, and 
taking Moses and the prophets, misunderstood through 
Aristotle (himself misunderstood) as a guide, it devel- 
oped a system which attempted to harmonize the most 
absolute faith with a latent but real naturalistic ration- 
alism ; a system which had an internal force never- 
theless, w^hich has stamped its results ineffaceably on 
the thinking of mankind. The modern philosophy, 
taking man as a centre, endeavors to harmonize in 
him and to him the world we see, with its principles 
and causes which we do not see." The ancient philos- 
ophy is to be expressed as cosmosophic ; that is, we 
comprehend it by conceiving it as thought directed 
neither by special revelation nor by science, — the 
deductions of the natural mind. It exhibits to us most 
interestingly the intuitional perceptions, the illumi- 
nating power of that inner light born into the world 
in every man. A man may not expect to escape the 
fallacies of the philosophy of his own day who takes not 
the trouble to comprehend the character, the nature, 
and the reasons for the fallacies which have gone before. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 59 

We see the explanation and the reasons for the existence 
of an apple which we hold in our hand, by knowing of 
the tree from whence it came. AVe may know of the 
tree only by comprehending that which has preceded 
and which has evolved it. So with an ism or a theory j 
a true sense of judgment and appreciation is found alone 
in associative relations. 

In the middle ages, man, discarding entirely the 
evidences of the senses, threw himself exclusively into 
the dogmas of the church, — into a church not infalli- 
ble, but misinterpreting. Hence, as in the advance of 
thought fallibility was demonstrated where infallibility 
was claimed, so it was as impossible for evolution to 
stand still as for the earth of Ptolemy. Nowhere more 
than in the period intervening between the second and 
the third era are the religious characteristics of man 
exhibited. The church claimed to be strictly and only 
of God ; all and everything outside of the church was 
antichrist, was anti-God. Man hesitated. God was 
the Father, and the nature of man made him feel a 
sonship. The son, from the depths of his yearnings, 
desired and longed for unison with the Father; but 
^' E pur se muove." The world would move, and the 
church denounced the moving. Copernicus preferred 
to have his end in theodor of what he deemed sanctity 
rather than that his halo should be the truth of the 
greatest astronomical discovery of the world. Hence 
the first of the scholastic periods as referred to, a 
period marked by entire subordination of thought to 
authority, a period in which evolution was no evolu- 
tion and was to be discarded if it accorded not with the 
dominant theology, — this era, crowded with thinkers, 



6o TBINKERS AND THINKIXG. 

continued for a thousand years, and ended only when 
Bacon and Descartes, like the first drops of an overfull 
fountain, fell, from necessity, over the sides. Yet,— 
omniscient God, — Bacon and Descartes found him on 
the outside ; and now not only the modern positivist, 
but the church, sees that God is everywhere ; and to be 
a philosopher and a physicist is not to-day to be neces- 
sarily anti-theological, for philosophy and physics are 
recognized to be theology. There is, however, to-day, 
still error ; but it is now, perhaps, more on the side of 
the scientists. Like men waxed over-fat, pride in their 
discoveries has turned their heads, and in a madness 
which has come of over-conceit, they are in danger of 
falling back into the laps of Thales and Anaximenes. 
It is the greater misfortune, however, that in such weak- 
ness they have example in the action of the church 
which preceded the scholastic period. The church 
denounced the scholastics. Now the scholastics, at 
times, deny the church. But as the weakness of the 
one has been demonstrated, so shall it require but a 
little more time to make the dissenting scientist hide 
his head to save his blushes. If like be unto like, how 
may this but be ? 

To appreciate the virtues, and as well the fallacies, of 
human thought and human investigation, to possess data 
upon which to rest conclusions, — in one word, to know of 
life and of man's relation with the entity, — is simply 
to review the platforms as age after age has laid the one 
upon the other. Thus indeed may we alone know of the 
confusion of to-day, for out of conclusions have grown 
conclusions, and the thoughts of to-day are recognized 
to be but the modified convictions of yesterday. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 6i 

The fields of philosophical thought ! No barren 
glebes are these. Sweet-smelling odors, and brightest 
sunlight, and streams of golden richness, live in them. 

" Such streams as issue from a wounded god; 
Pure emanation, uncorrupted ilood, 
Unlike our gross, diseased, terrestrial blood." 

" If fav'ring Phoebus had not Plato given 
To Grecian lands, how would the learned god 
Have e'er instructed mortal minds in learning? 
But he did send him, that as ^sculapius, 
His son, 's the best physician of the body, 
So Plato should be of the immortal soul."* 

Philosophical thought is commonly esteemed as hav- 
ing origin in Thales ; before him had no one made 
attempt to found a system, mankind, as remarked by 
Lewes, contenting themselves with accepting the world 
as they found it ; with believing what they saw, and 
with adoring what they could not see. 

*' The more extended our research," says Mr. Grove, 
in his lectures on "The Correlation of Physical Forces," 
" the more we find knowledge to be a thing of pro- 
gression ; that the very notions which appear to our- 



-•■ " The celebrity of the great classical writers is confined within no 
limits, except those which separate civilized from savage man. Their 
works are the common property of every polished nation. They have 
furnished subjects for the painter and models for the poet. In the 
minds of the educated classes throughout Europe their names are 
indissolubly associated with the endearing recollections of intellectual 
fruition. So great is the veneration with which they are regarded, 
that even the editors and commentators who perform the lowest menial 
offices to their memory are considered like the equerries and cham- 
berlains of sovereign princes, as entitled to a high rank in the table of 
literary precedence." — Macaulay. 



62 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

selves new have arisen, though perhaps in a very 
indirect manner, from successive modifications of 
traditional opinions. Each word we utter, each 
thought we think, has in it the vestiges, is in itself the 
impress, of antecedent words and thoughts. As each 
material form, could we rightly read it, is a book, con- 
taining in itself the past history of the world, so, 
different though our philosophy may now appear from 
that of our progenitors, it is but theirs added to or 
subtracted from, transmitted drop by drop through 
the filter of antecedent, as ours will be through that 
of subsequent ages. The relic is to the past as is the 
germ to the future." 

Thales opened the epoch of inquiry. Before him 
were none of whom he might learn. He could turn 
nowhere but towards nature, and here he did turn, 
seeking to learn of her the mysteries of life. Of God, 
as suggested by Hegel, as an intelligence, could he 
have had no conception. God he believed in, but his 
gods were of growth and generation. A god developed 
from water as did a tree. 

Having, thence, nature alone as a teacher, Thales 
interrogated her. Whence, he asked, are all these 
things I see about me ? Whence and what is Thales ? 
This was the starting-point of inquiry. Out of it have 
grown the interrogative evolutions of the twenty-five 
succeeding centuries. 

All things, argued Thales, must have a principle out 
of which they develop. Something must be, that some- 
thing is. Looking through nature for this primal 
something, he remarked that in all bodies was moisture, 
that moisture was everywhere. Finding thus a some- 



THIXKERS AND THINKING. (^^ 

thing more constant than any other thing, ■ he pro- 
nounced as his conviction that water was the life of 
the world, — the that from which all things came, and 
in which all things had existence. The gods, he said, 
had their origin in water, and were, like mito men, 
passing away to give place to others.* 

More, however, than a mere speculative physicist was 
Thales ; ever was he alert, like all thinking people, for 
the catching and comprehension of every-day truths. 

Among the quoted sayings of the Ionian are to be 
found the following, recorded by Diogenes Laertius : 
"Between life and death there is no difference." 
"Why, then," said some one to him, "do you not 
die?" " Because," said he, " it makes no difference." 
A man asked him which was made first, night or day, 
and he replied, "Night was made first, by one day." 
Another man asked him whether a man who did wrons: 



* " It can excite no surprise," says Thirlwall, in his History of 
Greece, " that in the period of origin of the Ionic school, when thought 
and inquiry were stimulated in so many new directions, some active 
minds should have been attracted by the secrets of nature, and should 
have been led to grapple with some of the great questions which the 
contemplation of the universe suggests. There can, therefore, be no 
need of attempting to trace the impulse by which the Greeks were 
now carried towards such researches to a foreign origin. But it is 
an opinion which has found many advocates, that they were indebted 
to their widening intercourse with other nations, particularly with 
Egypt, Phoenicia, and the interior of Asia, for several of the views or 
doctrines which were fundamental or prominent parts of their early 
philosophical systems. The result, however, of the maturest investi- 
gation seems to show that there is no sufficient ground for such con- 
jectures." 

Arguments concerning the origin of Greek philosophy are found 
considered fuUy by Ritter. See his " Geschichte der Philosophic." 



64 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

could escape the notice of the gods. ''No, not even 
if he think Avrong," said he. When he was asked what 
was very difiicult, he said, ''To know oneself;" and 
what was easy, "To advise another." What was most 
pleasant? "To be successful." When asked what 
hard thing he had seen, he said, "An old man a 
tyrant." When the question was put to him how 
a man might most easily endure misfortune, he 
said, "If he saw his enemies more unfortunate still." 
When asked how men might live most justly and most 
virtuously, he said, " If we never do ourselves what we 
blame in others." To the question. Who is happy? 
he made answer, " He who is healthy in his body, easy 
in his circumstances, and well instructed as to his 
mind." He said that men ought to remember those 
friends who were absent as well as those who were 
present, and not to care about adorning their faces, but 
to be beautified by their studies. " Do not," said he, 
" get rich by evil actions, and let not any one ever be 
able to reproach you for speaking against those who 
partake of your friendship." " All the assistance that 
you give to your parents," said he, "the same have 
you a right to expect of your children." 

Succeeding Thales is Anaximenes. Of this philoso- 
pher little is known. Diogenes describes him as a 
Milesian, a pupil of Anaximander and Parmenides. 
The principle of everything this sage affirmed to be 
air and the infinite. The stars, he said, moved not 
under, but around, the earth ; the air is the breath of 
the world, which animates all the beings that live in 
it. Air encomjjasses and sustains all bodies; in it the 
heavenly bodies float. Pursuing, suggests a biogra- 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 65 

pher, the method of Thales^, he could not satisfy him- 
self of the truth of his doctrine. Water was not to 
him the most significant element. He felt within him 
a something which moved him he knew not how, he 
knew not why; something higher than himself; in- 
visible, but ever present. This he called life. This 
life he believed to be air. Was there not also without 
him, no less than within him, an ever-moving, ever- 
present, invisible air ? The air which was within him, 
and which he called his life, was it not a part of the 
air which was without him? and if so, was not this air 
the beginning of things? He looked around him, and 
thought his conjecture was confirmed. The air seemed 
universal. The earth was as a broad leaf resting upon 
it. All things were produced from it ; all things re- 
solved into it. When he breathed he drew in a part 
of this universal life. All things were nourished by 
air, as he was nourished by it. Air was the stream 
of life; in it were held together all heterogeneous 
substances of which the body was composed. It gave 
them not only unity, but force and vitality. 

Diogenes of Apollonia, following Anaximenes, ex- 
hibits a step in advancing thought. The date of birth 
of this philosopher is given as 460 before Christ. The 
air, as announced by his predecessor, he accepted as 
the principle of life, but he widened the outlook by 
pointing out an analogy with the soul. The air, he 
said, may be only the principle of life as resides in it a 
vital force. The air is, therefore, a soul ; it is a living 
and intelligent being. It is life, as it is the means of 
expression of the intelligence and force which use it 
as a vehicle. The force of the air is prior in point of 



66 7V//.VA'£/:S AA'D TIIIXKJNG. 

time to air itself. Air is life through that which is its 
soul.* 

There are in this conception two remarkable points, 
as noticed by a biographer of the philosopher, indi- 
cative of very great progress in speculation. The 
first is the attribute of intelligence with which this 
primal is endowed. Anaximenes considered the pri- 
mary substance to be an animated substance. Air, in 
his system, was life, but the life did not necessarily 
imply intelligence. Diogenes saw that life was not 
only force, but intelligence ; the air which stirred 
within not only prompted, but instructed. The air, 
as the origin of all things, is necessarily an eternal, 
imperishable substance ) but as soul it is also, neces- 
sarily, endowed with consciousness. It knows much, 
and this knowledge is another proof of its being the 
primary substance ; for without reason, says Diogenes, 
it would be impossible for all to be arranged duly and 
proportionately; and whatever object we considerwill 
be found to be arranged and ordered in the best and 
most beautiful manner. Order can only result from 
intelligence; the soul is therefore the primal. f 

•■• The following are given as the doctrines of this philosopher by 
Diogenes Laertius : " The air, he said, was an element, that the 
worlds were infinite, and that the vacuum was infinite ; that the air, as 
it was condensed, and as it was rarefied, was the productive cause of 
the worlds ; that nothing can be produced out of nothing: nam nihil 
e nihilo, in nikilufn nil posse revcrti, and that nothing can be de- 
stroyed so as to become nothing ; that the earth is round, firmly 
planted in the middle of the universe, having acquired its situation 
from the circumvolutions of the hot principle around it, and its con- 
sistency from the cold." 

f Lewes. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 67 

From speculations as just alluded to, Diogenes fell 
into what science would be disposed to term most 
childish fallacies. As an individual, he said, has his 
vital force in the whole, so must it be with the world 
at large, which in itself is a living unit. "All life 
respires : the stars are the respiratory organs of the 
world : the attraction of moisture by the sun, of iron 
by the magnet, are processes of respiration. Man has his 
superiority to brutes in breathing a purer air, he being 
erect, while the latter bow their heads to the ground." 

Yet, withal, the confidence of Diogenes in what he 
wrote was very great, — quite as great as that of many 
modern philosophers, who are to be quite as severely 
criticised by succeeding ages. The first words of his 
treatise are, '' It appears to me that he who begins any 
treatise ought to lay down principles about which there 
can be no dispute, and that his exposition of them be 
simple and dignified."* 

-'•" What may so impress as the all, and yet the nothingness, of human 
comprehension? " All advance in knowledge is a deliverance of man 
from himself. Slowly and painfully we learn that he is not the measure 
of^truth, that the fact may be very different from the appearance to 
him. The lesson is hard, but the reward is great. So he escapes from 
illusion and error, from ignorance and failure. Directing his thoughts 
and energies no longer according to his own impressions, but accord- 
ing to the truth of things, he finds himself in possession of an unim- 
aginable power alike of understanding and of acting. 

" But the conditions of this lordship are inexorable. They are the 
surrender of prepossessions, the abandonment of assumption, the con- 
fession of ignorance ; the open eye and the humble heart. Hence in 
all passing from error to truth we learn something respecting ourselves, 
as well as something respecting the object of our study. Simultaneously 
with our better knowledge we recognize the reason of our ignorance, 
and perceive what defect on our part has caused us to think wrongly. 

" Either the world is such as it appears to us, or it is not. There mubt 



68 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

The mode and manner of speculation alluded to 
embraces what is known as the introductory or physical 
method. It is plainly enough to be understood that in 
such direction would the first inquiries of men naturally 
turn. The world about them they could see. That 
seen by them would they the most naturally question. 
But from the objective it is to be perceived that an 
advancing intelligence must necessarily carry speculation 
to things themselves, outside of conditions. Moisture 
or air came to be recognized as expressions, that is, 
things subject in themselves to a law of direction. It 
must therefore be that that which directs is higher 
than that Avhich is directed. From the physical 
method, speculation passed to what is called the 
mathematical. 

As the next thinker making his impression on man- 
kind and the thoughts of his time, may be instanced 
Pythagoras. This is he who, being asked by Leon, 
king of Achaia, the meaning of the word philosopher, 
— a designation said to have been first employed by this 
sage, — replied, ''That as at public games some were 
contending for glory, and others were buying and sell- 
ing for the sake of gain, but that there was one class 
who came simply as spectators ; so in human life there 
were those who, regarding as unworthy of a wise 
man the desire of gain or fame, sought above all to 



be some condition affecting ourselves which modifies the impression 
we receive from it ; and this condition must be operative upon all 
mankind: it must relate to man as a wliole, rather than to individual 
men."— Buckle. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 69 

become wise ; these were philosophers^ or lovers of 
wisdom." 

Pythagoras, with an appreciation of personal power, 
labored to attain influence over the minds of his fellow- 
men ; and so wonderful was his success, that when his 
disciples were questioned as to their reasons for what 
they believed and practiced, they deemed it all-sufhcient 
to give the answer, "He himself said. so." "The 
certain fact, " says Lytton-Bulwer, " of the mighty effect 
that in his single person he wrought in Italy, proves 
him to have possessed that nameless art of making 
a personal impression upon mankind and creating indi- 
vidual enthusiasm, which is necessary to those who ob- 
tain a moral command and are the founders of sects 
and institutions. According to the testimony of Cicero 
and of x\ulus Gellius, Pythagoras arrived in Italy during 
the reign of TarquiniusSuperbus, and fixed his residence 
in Crotona, a city in the bay of Tarentum, colonized by 
the Greeks of the Achaean tribe. If we may lend a par- 
tial credit to the extravagant fables of later disciples, 
endeavoring to extract from florid superadditions some 
original germ of simple truth, it would seem that he 
first appeared in the character of a teacher of youth, 
and, as was not unusual in those times, soon rose from 
the preceptor to the legislator. Dissensions in the city 
favored his objects. The senate (consisting of a thou- 
sand members, doubtless of a different race from the 
body of the people : the first the posterity of the settlers, 
the last the native population) availed itself of the arri- 
val and influence of an eloquent and renowned philos- 
opher. He lent himself to the consolidation of aris- 
tocracies, and was equally inimical to democracy and* 



70 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



tyranny. But his policy was that of no vulgar ambition. 
He refused, at least for considerable time, ostensible 
l)o\ver and office, and was contented with instituting an 
organized and formidable society not wholly dissimilar 
to that mighty order founded by Loyola in times com- 
paratively recent. The disciples admitted into this 
society underwent examination and probation. It was 
through degrees that they passed into its higher honors 
and were admitted into deeper secrets. Religion made 
the basis of the fraternity, but religion connected with 
human advancement and power. He selected three 
hundred — who at Crotona formed his order — from the 
noblest families ; and they were professedly reared to 
know themselves, that so they might be fitted to com- 
mand the world. It was not long before the society of 
which Pythagoras Avas the head appears to have sup- 
planted the ancient senate and obtained the legislative 
administration. In this institution Pythagoras stands 
alone ; no other founder of Greek philosophy resembles 
him. By all accounts he differed from the other sages 
in his estimation of the importance of women. He is 
said to have lectured to and taught them. His wife 
was herself a philosopher, and fifteen disciples of the 
softer sex rank among the prominent ornaments of his 
school. Had Pythagoras possessed a more coarse and 
personal ambition, he might perhaps have founded a 
mighty dynasty. But his was the ambition, not of a 
hero, but of a sage. He wished rather to establish a 
system than to exalt himself. His immediate followers 
saw not all the consequences that might be derived from 
the fraternity he founded ; and the political designs of 
his gorgeous and august philosophy, only for a while 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



71 



successful, left behind but the mummeries of an im- 
potent freemasonry and the enthusiastic ceremonies of 
half-witted ascetics." 

Pythagoras is credited with being the inventor of 
stringed instruments, and of several important geo- 
metrical theorems \ among them, that the three angles 
of a triangle are together equal to two right angles, and 
that in any right-angled triangle the square formed 
on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square of 
the two sides. The death of Pythagoras is said to 
have occurred in an insurrection at Crotona, where, 
with a number of his disciples, he perished in a build- 
ing which was set on fire during one of their meetings, 
by opponents who had become embittered by the ex- 
traordinary success and arrogance of a creed to which 
they were not admitted. 

Understanding thus something of the founder, we 
may pass to his philosophy. In examining this, w^e are 
quickly enough led to perceive a non-accordance with 
what, in modern idea, is esteemed the mathematical. 

Pythagoras, perceiving that ulterior to all phenomena 
must reside a directing force, — an invariable some- 
thingj^needing a definite name for this something, 
called it number. Thus the apyrj, the primal, the cause 
of causes, must reside in the number One ; as, start where 
you will. One precedes all other numbers, and beyond 
One is there naught, and in naught is nothing ; there- 
fore, in One resides all of life. We pause to ask 
ourselves what is meant by this One. Has it the same 
meaning as that which is called the Monadology of 
Leibnitz ? The latter is certainly the easier to under- 
stand. "The elementary particles of matter," says 



72 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

this speculator, ''are vital forces, not acting mechan- 
ically, but from internal principle. They are incor- 
poreal or spiritual atoms, inaccessible to all change 
from without, but subject to internal movement. Leib- 
nitz conceived the whole universe, bodies as well as 
minds, to be made up of monads; that is, simple sub- 
stances, each of which is, by its creator, in the begin- 
ning of its existence, endowed with certain active and 
perceptive powers. A monad is, therefore, an active 
substance, simple, without parts or figure, which has 
within itself the power to produce all the changes it 
undergoes from the beginning of its existence to eter- 
nity. The changes of the monad, of what kind soever, 
though they may seem to us the effect of causes oper- 
ating from without, are only the gradual and successive 
evolutions of its own internal powers, which would 
have produced all the same changes and motions 
although there had been no other being in the universe. 
A monad is not a material, but a formal atom, it being 
impossible for a thing to be at once material and pos- 
sessed of a real unity and indivisibility." 

''Monadology rests upon this axiom. Every sub- 
stance is at the same time a cause, and every substance, 
being a cause, has therefore in itself the principle of its 
own development. Such is the monad ; it is a simple 
force. Each monad has relation to all others ; it cor- 
responds with the plan of the universe ; it is the uni- 
verse abridged; a living mirror, which reflects the 
entire universe under its own point of view. But, every 
monad being simple, there is no immediate action ot 
one monad upon another. There is, however, a nat- 
ural relation of their respective development, which 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



73 



makes their apparent communication. This harmony, 
which has its reason in the wisdom of the supreme 
director, is pre-established harmony."* 

Is the force of the Unit of Leibnitz and the One of 
Pythagoras the same ? We think we may answer no, 
seeing that the life of the unit has direction in a pre- 
established harmony. An atom of oxygen, says Fara- 
day, is an atom of oxygen forever ; but oxygen is not a 
primal, even though it may be in truth an element. 

" The principia," says Sextus Empiricus, " are invis- 
ible, intangible, and incorporeal.. All phenomena must 
originate in the simplest elements." Is the simplest 
of simplest elements ''One," and is ''One" what to- 
day is termed God ? Does the vitality, asks Mr. Huxley, 
which is seen to appear on the coming together of cer- 
tain molecules differ from the aquosity which is seen to 
appear on the coming together of certain other mole- 
cules? or, to make other expression of the subject, did 
Pythagoras deal with numbers as symbols merely, or as 
entities ? Ritter afiirms the former ; Aristotle the latter. 
Pythagoras, says the German author, is to be taken 
alone symbolically ; in symbol does he speak, and in 
symbol has he his meaning. Dealing with physical 
things, says Aristotle, the Pythagoreans arose not to 
that to which their causes and principles should have 
led them. The finite, the infinite, and the "One," they 
maintained to be not separate existences, such as are 
fire, water, etc. ; but the abstract infinite and the 
abstract "One" are respectively the substances of the 
things of which they are predicated ; and hence, too, 

* Lewes : History of Philosophy. 
6 



76 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

Hcraclitus it is who is known in history as the 
weeping philosopher, not, as was a common notion, 
that he was in constant tears, but that, horror-stricken 
at the vices and follies of his fellows, he grew misocial, 
and at length, in the solitude of a mountain, sought 
peace in quiet, and simplicity in nature. The charac- 
ter of Heraclitus is epitomized in a reply made by him 
to Darius, King of Persia, who invited him to his court. 
''All men," replied Heraclitus, ''depart from the 
paths of truth and justice. They have no attachment 
of any kind but avarice ; they only aspire to a vain 
glory with the obstinacy of folly. As for me, I know 
not malice ; I am the enemy of no one. I utterly 
despise the vanity of courts, and never will place my 
foot upon Persian ground. Content with little, I live 
as I please." 

"Life," said Heraclitus, " is a universal. Within 
me is a something I may not call my own, yet which 
is, in the highest sense, myself. This universal is that 
which makes me of union with my fellow-men and with 
the life of the world ; from the fountain of all existence 
does it flow to me, and from me back to the fountain, 
— and so back and forth forever." But this some- 
thing was pronounced by Heraclitus "The Universal 
Ether." " Inhaling," he said, "through the breath," 
the universal ether, which is divine reason, we become 
conscious.* In sleep we are unconscious, but on waking 
we again become intelligent ; for in sleep, when the 
organs of sense are closed, the mind within is shut out 



* "And God breathed into his nostrils the breath of hfe, and man 
became aUviner soul." 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 77 

from all sympathy with the surrounding ether, the uni- 
versal reason ; and the only connecting medium is the 
breath, as it were a root, and by this separation the 
mind loses the power of recollection it before possessed. 
Nevertheless, on awakening, the mind repairs its mem- 
ory through the senses, — as it were, through inlets, — 
and thus, coming into contact with surrounding ether, 
it resumes its intelligence. As fuel, when brought near 
the fire, is altered and becomes fiery, but on being re- 
moved again becomes quickly extinguished, so too the 
portion of the all-embracing which sojourns in our 
body becomes more irrational when separated from it ; 
but on the restoration of this connection, through its 
many pores or inlets, it again becomes similar to the 
whole. 

"The world," affirmed Heraclitus, "^ is neither by 
the gods nor by man : it was, and is, and ever shall be, 
an ever-living fire, in due measure self-enkindled, and 
in due measure self-extinguished." By the expression 
"fire," as used by Heraclitus, we cannot, with various 
of his biographers, esteem him as having other than a 
symbolical meaning. We cannot see that he had the idea 
merely of a warm, dry ether, for thus might we not but 
place him exclusively in the physical school of thinkers. 
The expression "fire," as illustrative of a principle, is 
verified by his famous simile of the river: "No one 
has ever been twice upon the same stream, for different 
waters are constantly flowing down. It dissipates its 
waters and gathers them again ; it approaches and it 
recedes, it overflows and falls. ' ' 

Preceding Heraclitus, and succeeding Pythagoras, 
was a school founded by Xenophanes and continued by 



78 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

Parmenides, called the Eleatic, after Elea, a coast-town 
of Lower Italy. This school was to an extent mathe- 
matical, accepting alone as truth that which accorded 
with reason. In consequence, its disciples were mostly 
skeptical concerning all things, because it must be seen 
that, reason differing according to the cultivation of the 
reasoner, few might come to a like conclusion on any 
one point. "All things," said Xenophanes, ''are in- 
comprehensible." By and through reason are they, 
answered Heraclitus. Reason, ruled by sensation, may 
have in it no fullness. Man has no certain knowledge, 
but God has, and vain man learns from God, just 
as the boy from the man. Individual reason is a fal- 
lacy; reason belongs not to individuality. Truth is 
the . universal reason, and the universal reason is sense, 
— the intuitional. Individual knowledge he maintained 
to be a truth to the individual, yet only truth as far as 
it went. Thus he said, "The ass prefers thistles to 
gold. The ass is right and wrong. In affirmation 
man is equally right and wrong. All is, and is not, for 
though in truth it does come into being, yet it forth- 
with ceases to be." 

But Heraclitus, like his predecessors, groped in the 
fog, "for barbarian souls," he said, "have no guide 
in the senses, for these deceive the ill-educated." 
Heraclitus had not gotten far beyond the Eleatics. 

That we may avoid the risk of losing the interest 
of the reader, we will allow the example of these few 
thinkers to stand as the illustration of the first steps 
in philosophy; enough is there perhaps to exhibit 
departure from traditionary theories, and as well the 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



79 



attempt to find an explanation of things in them- 
selves. 

A second epoch introduces the period of sophism. 
We are to understand this period by looking upon it as 
one of baffled thought ; it denied most things, yet pro- 
duced nothing. The Sophists were disputants; they 
wrangled with the cosmogonists, and also among them- 
selves ; their assertion was that the proof of a thing is 
in the prover, and that a Sophist could at any time make 
the worse appear the better reason. A Sophist — because 
with sophistry he could deny and confound the Avisdom 
of the mathematicians and physicists — believed in no 
truth and no principle. " The Soph ysters were called 
'counterfeit wise men.' For lykewyse as though a 
Sophyster woulde with a fonde argumente prove unto 
a symple soule that two egges were three, because that 
there is one, and that ther be twayne, and one and 
twayne make three ; yt symple unlearned man, though 
he lacke learnyng to soyle hys fonde argument, hath yet 
wit ynough to laugh thereat, and to eat the two egges 
himself, and bid the Sophyster take and eat the thyrde. "* 

The relation of the Sophist to the classes of his period 
who rested in an indifferent and tideless skepticism seems 
to have been "that, while both were convinced of the 
insufficiency of all knowledge, the Skeptic contented 
himself with the conviction; while the Sophist, satisfied 
with the vanity of all endeavor to penetrate the mysteries 



"-•■The position of sophism seems expressed in a single line from Car- 
neades: "The human mind," said the African disputant, "cannot 
attain to truth." 



8o THINKERS AND THINKING. 

of the universe, began to consider his relation to other 
men, to devote himself to politics and rhetoric. If 
there was no possibility of truth, there only remained 
the possibility of persuasion. If one opinion was as 
true as another, — that is, if neither was true, — it was 
nevertheless desirable, for the sake of society, that cer- 
tain opinions should prevail ; and if logic was powerless, 
rhetoric was efficient. Hence, says the Sophist, the wise 
man is the physician of the soul : he cannot, indeed, 
induce truer thoughts into the mind, since all thoughts 
are equally true, but he can induce healthier and more 
profitable thoughts. He can in the same way heal 
society, since by his oratory he can introduce good, 
useful sentiments in place of those that are base and 
hurtfuh" 

Sophism, as a period, seems to have had alone the 
meaning of man in mid-ocean without chart or com- 
pass. The Sophists of to-day are multifold, and are 
much like unto their ancient brethren ; they are found 
now, as then, representatives of all kinds of thoughts : 
*' rich, powerful, rhetorical, dazzling, — not pro found, — 
philosophical, metaphysical, quizzical," — rudderless 
logs rolling upon life's ocean. 

But periods of negation may not continue long. 
Man is a positive being. Sophism may be compared, 
in a way, to the rest of a tired, disheartened man, who 
lays him down that strength for the rebound may come 
to him. From Protagoras and his negations sprang 
Socrates with his dialectics.* 



-•- Aristotle affords a simple and true conception of sophism in pro- 
nouncing it a " syllogismus contentiosus," a proposition not framed 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 8 1 

Socrates ! — Who but shall press and crowd to hear 
and see Socrates, — grand thinker, true philosopher, 
mightiest of the mighty? Before the remains of this 
man, who but, like Antisthenes, shall leave the seat 
of the teacher to become a pupil? Let Athens be 

for proving, but for disputation. To understand the Sophists, it is 
necessary to beware of confounding too closely the men who bore 
this name. The Sophists made a profession both of philosophy arid 
rhetoric, and communicated their knowledge and exhibited their art 
to all who were Avilhng to pay for the lessons. Some of them are said 
to have reduced themselves to poverty, none to have enriched them- 
selves by their philosophical pursuit. At Athens especially, where the 
value of eloquence, as a weapon or a shield, was felt every day more 
and more, the youths who flocked round the Sophists were, in gen- 
eral, much less curious about any truths which they had to deliver 
than desirous of acquiring the art which would enable them to shine 
in the assembly, to prevail in the courts of justice, and to argue on 
any subject and on any side, so as to perplex their adversary and to 
impose upon the hearer. It is probable, indeed, that each Sophist had 
some favorite topics on which he discoursed more readily than others. 
But still it seems all were ambitious of the reputation of being able to 
discuss any subject that might be proposed to them.* Protagoras, 
the most prominent of the Sophists, commences a book, which, after 
its publication, was burned publicly in the market-place, as follows : 
" I can know nothing concerning the gods, whether they exist or not ; 
for we are prevented from gaining such knowledge not only by the 
obscurity of the thing itself, but by the shortness of human life." 
"Man," taught Protagoras, " is the measure of all things. To the 
external world his relation is merely that of sensuous apprehension." 

Plato, in the dialogue of " Theaetetus," — further reference to which 
is made a few pages on, — shows the weakness of sophistic premises in 
the arguments of Socrates. 

The Sophists held the position of public teachers. Gorgias taught 
rhetoric and politics; Prodicus, grammar; Hippias, astronomy, 
mathematics, and mnemonics ; Dionysidorus, military tactics, etc. 



* History of Greece. 



82 THINKERS AND THINKING, 

likened to the centre of the earth. In this centre 
God planted the seed Socrates ; and the tree has grown 
to be a mighty banyan, embracing within its arms all of 
civilization. What thought but belongs to Socrates? 
What speech but is the idiom of the son of Sophro- 
niscus? '^If I was not afraid," says Alcibiades, "I 
would confirm to you by oath the strange effects I have 
suffered from the words of Socrates, and do still suffer. 
For when I hear him my heart leaps up far more than 
the hearts of those who celebrate the Corybantic mys- 
teries ; my tears are poured out as he talks. I have 
heard Pericles and other excellent orators, and have 
been pleased with their discourses ; but I suffered 
nothing of this kind, nor was my soul ever on those 
occasions disturbed and filled with self-reproach, — as it 
were slavishly laid prostrate. But this Marsyas has 
often affected me in the way I describe, until the life I 
lead seems hardly worth living. He forces me to 
confess that, while I myself am still in want of many 
things, I neglect my own necessities and attend to 
those of the Athenians. I stop my ears, therefore, as 
from the sirens, and flee away as fast as possible, that I 
may not sit down beside him and grow old in listening 
to his talk ; for this man has reduced me to feel the 
sentiments of shame; he alone inspires me with re- 
morse and awe, for I feel in his presence my incapacity 
of refuting what he says, or of refusing to do that which 
he directs ; but when I depart from him, the glory 
which the multitude confers overwhelms me. I escape, 
therefore, and hide myself from him. And when I 
see him I am overwhelmed with humiliation, because 
I have neglected to do what I have confessed to him 



THINKERS AND THINKING. Z^, 

ought to be done, and often and often have I wished 
that he were no longer to be seen among men. But, 
if that were to happen, I well know that I should suffer 
far greater pain : so that where I can turn, or what I 
shall do with this man, I know not. All this have I 
and many others suffered from the pipings of this 
satyr. ' ' 

Socratism, as a subtle essence, exists in all thought \ 
for, though, as further remarked by the ward of Peri- 
cles, ''this man talks forever about brass-founders, and 
leather-cutters, and skin-dressers, so that any dull and 
unobservant person might easily laugh at his discourse, 
yet if any one saw it opened, as it were, and got within 
the sense of his words, he would then find that they alone 
of all that enters into the mind of man to utter had a 
profound and persuasive meaning, and that they were 
most divine, and that they presented to the mind 
innumerable images of every excellence, and that they 
tended towards objects of the highest moment, or 
rather towards all that he who seeks the possession of 
what is supremely good and beautiful need regard as 
essential to the accomplishment of his ambition." 

Dialectics is a species of sophism : hence Socrates is 
oftentimes mentioned as a Sophist. But the sophism 
of Socrates was the logic of taking counsel together, 
the logic of seeking truth for truth's sake, — for the 
gathering of inductions which should fit man truly for 
his life-relations. Dialectics, the dialectics of Socratic 
invention or expression, admitted no sophism in pre- 
mises : hence, with stable data, must there be reliable 
induction. The Socratic philosophy is the logic of 
inductive reasoning. ''The declared questioner is 



84 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

Socrates," says Plato, '^of all men renowned for wis- 
dom or any intellectual eminence. Who is he ? Socra- 
tes, the son of Sophroniscus the stone-cutter and of 
Phoenarete the midwife. What does he? Converse. 
For what purpose ? To expose error. Simply that ? 
That, and no more. Has he no truth to put in the 
place of error ? He says, ' None, except the truth that 
man is ignorant and fancies himself wise. ' ' ' 

"In their flowing robes, and followed by crowds of 
eager listeners," says a biographer of the philosopher,* 
"would the Sophists follow Socrates, treating with 
ineffable contempt the poor and humbly-clad man. 
Rude was he and ungainly in movement, unlike all 
citizens in his habits. Barefoot, he wandered about 
the streets of Athens, absorbed in thought. Sometimes 
he stood still for hours, fixed in meditation. Every 
day he strolled into the market-place and disputed 
with all w^ho were willing. In appearance he resembled 
a Silenus. His flattened nose, with wide and upturned 
nostrils, his projecting eyeballs, his thick and sensual 
lips, his squab figure and unwieldy belly, were all 
points upon which ridicule might fasten. Yet, when 
this Silenus spoke, there was a witchery in his tongue 
which fascinated those whom his manner had disgusted, 
and which awed and baffled his opponents into quiet 
and wonder." 

Out of Socrates have grown, as stems twining about 
a common trunk, Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon.f 

* Lewes. 

f " They say that Socrates met Xenophon in a narrow lane, and put 
his stick across it and prevented him from passing by, asking him 
where all kinds of necessary things were sold. And, when he had 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 85 

Socrates, according to Demetrius, was born at Athens 
about B.C. 468, and as a boy learned and labored at the 
trade of his father, a stone-cutter of the finer order, or 
a sculptor, as he is variously described. "A stone- 
scraper was Socrates," sneeringly says Timon. Every- 
thing about him, is the common affirmation, was 
remarkable, — personal appearance, moral physiognomy, 
position, object, method, life, and death. As a boy, 
marked characteristics designated him. ''Give thy 
son ' no teacher, ' ' is the oracle reported as having 
spoken to Sophraniscus, ''for within.him is a voice better 
than a thousand instructors." His father, poor, and 
not overfull of the necessities of life, seems to have 
trusted in the words of the oracle, although it is on 
record that he did what he was able to do for the 
advancement of the son. At a later period, however, 
Crito, a wealthy and generous citizen of Athens, 
being impressed with the genius displayed by Socrates, 
bought him books, and furnished money to pay teachers 
in the various arts and sciences. Let the debtors to 
Socrates not forget the generosity of Crito. 

From the ordinary pupilage of an Athenian student, 
Socrates passed to the teachings of Anaxagoras, that 
once rich but self-beggared Ionian, who, deeming the 
only object worthy a noble life to be the contemplation 
of the heavens, could declare, when beggary came upon 
him, " that if to philosophy he owed his worldly ruin, 
he was indebted to her for his soul's prosperity." 

answered hun, he asked him where men were made good and vir- 
tuous. And, as he did not know, he said, ' Follow me, then, and 
learn.' And from this time forth Xenophon became a follower of 
Socrates." — Diogenes Laertius. 



S6 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

But Socrates was not to be the continuous disciple of 
any teacher or school ; was not to consume a life in 
seeking with the physicists an explanation of the exist- 
ence of things : his philosophy was to take things as 
they are found, and to make the most of them. In 
other words, as Maurice expresses it, "he was ever 
craving a light to guide his footsteps along the pathway 
in which he found himself." 

As a searcher into the mysteries of life, Socrates was 
not without the experience of every-day living. In the 
Peloponnesian war he is said to have served several 
campaigns, and with such distinction that in his very 
first battle the prize of bravery was awarded him, 
which, however, according to Alcibiades, he resigned 
to that hero, that "his quality might not be offended 
in being excelled by one of meaner birth." In one 
of these campaigns occurred the famous incident of 
his being observed standing a day and a night so lost 
in meditation as to be oblivious to everything around 
him. 

The relations of Socrates with his wife Xantippe 
make a page in history, and a page which has done the 
wife great injustice, in making her name a synonym 
with shrew. It is to be regretted that so many of his 
biographers perpetuate this injustice. By Xantippe had 
Socrates three children ; and until philosophy and con- 
templation absorbed him to the exclusion even of 
parental obligations, were his home relations not unlike 
those of scholars in general. Of the domestic virtue of 
his wife, Socrates certainly possessed a sense of appre- 
ciation, and so expresses himself; and the oft-told story 
that he spoke of having married purposely a notorious 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 87 

termagant, because, "as his wish was to live and 
converse with men, he took her, convinced that in 
case he should be enabled to endure her he should be 
able to endure all others," is no doubt one of the many 
fictions associated with his career. The tarnish here 
is, without doubt, upon the escutcheon of the sage. 
It was the repetition of the indifference to all ordinary 
personal comforts as exhibited by the master Anaxag- 
oras. Modern instances furnish quite enough of similar 
examples, mutuus co7tsensus ; let his weaknesses follow 
his body ! 

As a politician Socrates figured conspicuously on the 
Athenian stage, exhibiting in the troublous times of his 
period a judgment, firmness,' and severity of purpose more 
courageous and manly than that heroism which carried 
Xenophon from the field of Delium. On one occasion, 
during the reign of the Thirty Tyrants, being ordered to 
assist in bringing to Athens Leon, who, to escape their 
power, had fled to Kolouri, an island in the Gulf of 
^Egina, he, at the risk of life, refused. On another 
occasion, a battle having been fought at Arginusse, at 
which circumstances seemed to render it impossible for 
the admirals to bury the dead, and the multitude clam- 
oring for the death of those of whom they asked impos- 
sible things, Socrates, being for the day president of 
the Prytanes, refused to put the question of condemna- 
tion, and continued to refuse even when the populace, 
growing furious, demanded that those who opposed 
their will should also die, and when, in bodily fear, all 
the other Prytanes had yielded. But principally was 
Socrates a politician in the aspect of a teacher of poli- 
tics. To teach, he felt to be his mission. Within him 



88 l^HIXKERS AND THINKING. 

he affirmed to exist a voice, — his ^^dsemon," his guide, 
— and this daemon warned him against the strife of 
political contention, teaching him to keep trimmed his 
light for the direction of others.* 

Socrates, at about the middle period of existence 
(although by some authorities the period is made much 
later), commenced the work of his mission. Trusting 
nothing to paper, because, as he said, "books may not 
teach, inasmuch as they have no power to speak to the 
correction of misinterpretations that may be put on 
them," he confined himself to oral instruction. Rising 
early in the morning, it was his habit to seek the market- 
place, the public walks, and gymnasia, — wherever, in- 
deed, people young or old congregated ; and to such as 

*" " And he was a man to look down upon any one who mocked him. 
And he prided himself upon the simplicity of his way of life ; and never 
exacted any pay from his pupils. And he used to say that the man 
who ate with the greatest appetite had the least need of delicacies ; 
and that he who drank with the greatest appetite was the least inclined 
to look for a draught which is not at hand. 

" And very often, while arguing and discussing points that arose, he 
was treated with great violence, and beaten, and pulled about, and 
laughed at, and ridiculed by the multitude. But he bore all with great 
equanimity. So that once, when he had been kicked and buffeted 
about, and had borne it all patiently, and some one expressed his sur- 
prise, he said, 'Suppose an ass had kicked me, would you have had 
me bring an action against him?' 

" And it was a saying of his that there was only one good, namely, 
knowledge ; and only one evil, namely, ignorance. 

" When a person said to him, ' Such an one speaks ill of you,' ' To 
be sure,' said he, 'for he has never learned to speak well." When 
Antisthenes turned the ragged side of his cloak to the light, he said, 
' I see your silly vanity through the holes in your cloak.' When some 
one said to him, ' Does not that man abuse you?' ' No,' said he, ' for 
that does not apply to me." "—Diogenes Laertius. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 89 

he might engage in conversation, rich or needy, learned 
or ignorant, polite or rude, would he talk the daylight 
away; and to all alike would he talk on the same general 
subjects. ^' He was." writes a biographer, " a knight- 
errant of philosophy, ever on the alert to rescue some 
forlorn truth from the dungeons of prejudice, and there- 
fore was not scrupulous as to who or what his adversary 
might be. Yet his especial enemies were the Sophists. 
He never neglected an opportunity of refuting them. 
He combated them with their own weapons and on 
their own ground. He knew all their tactics. He 
knew their strength and their weakness. Like them he 
had studied physics in the speculations of the early 
thinkers, and like them had seen that these speculations 
led to no certainty. But he had not, like them, made 
skepticism a refuge. He had not proclaimed truth to 
be a phantom because he could not embrace her. 
Defeated in his endeavors to penetrate the mysteries of 
the world without, he turned his attention to the world 
within. For physics he substituted morals. The cer- 
titude which he failed to gain respecting the operations 
of nature had not shaken his conviction of the certitude 
of the moral truths which his conscience irresistibly 
impressed upon his attention. The world of sense 
might be fleeting and deceptive ; the voice of conscience 
could not deceive. Turning his attention inwards, he 
discovered certain truths which admitted of no ques- 
tion. They were eternal, immutable, evident. These 
he opposed to the skepticism of the Sophists. Moral 
certitude was the rock upon which his soul could rest. 
From its heights he could survey the world and his 
relation to it." 

7 



90 THINKERS AND THINKING, 

''Only the wise," said Socrates, ''are fit to govern, 
and these are few. Government is a science, and a 
difficult science. It is infinitely more difficult to govern 
a state than to govern the helm of a ship. Yet the same 
people who would not trust themselves in a ship without 
an experienced pilot, not only trust themselves in a 
state with an inexperienced ruler, but also endeavor to 
become rulers themselves. ' ' One like Socrates might 
not but make enemies ; indeed, he would be very unlike 
to have many friends ; and such certainly was the con- 
dition of the philosopher. "For how can I," he was 
wont to say, "applaud where I alone see to condemn, 
and how can I call that wisdom which is but igno- 
rance ?"* 

Socrates was a man of the people. " For what," he 
asks, " may one learn in fields and woods?" It is in- 
deed said of him that, with the exception of his expe- 
ditions to Potidaea, Delium, and Amphipolis, and a 
holiday trip, he was never out of Athens. "Man," 
said he, "is the study of man." Democratic in the 



*That Socrates was not without enemies is shown not only by the 
manner of his death, but in the lampoons of his day. Thus, in the 
comedy of The Clouds, written by Aristophanes, he is described as the 
arch-sophist, the master of the free-thinking school, the corrupter of 
youth. The story is of a youth — Alcibiades is supposed to be repre- 
sented — who, being a spendthrift, has involved his father in losses and 
debts by his passion for the vices of the day. Placed under the 
instruction of Socrates, he has been taught to defraud his creditors, 
and, more than this, to mock at filial obedience and respect and vene- 
ration for the gods, as ideas antiquated and groundless. 

Let him who would misjudge Socrates, through this comedy, study 
the relation of the master and pupil as it will be found closely and 
clearly given by Thirlwall. See History of Greece, vol. i., page 396. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



91 



purest sense, Socrates yet condemned a common rule. 
With him the highest title commending a man to his 
fellows was attainment to the greatest goodness. To 
be noble was to be good, to be good was to be noble. 
Higher than such a nobility was there no order. So- 
crates was too intelligent and far-seeing to uphold the 
varying humor of the masses, or to be the friend of the 
Athenian democracy as it was. 

"Socrates," says Xenophon, ''was a man so pious 
that he did nothing without the sanction of the gods; 
so just that he never "vvronged any one, even in the least 
degree \ so much master of himself that he never pre- 
ferred the agreeable to the good j so wise that in de- 
ciding on the better and the worse he never failed : in 
short, he was the best and happiest man that could 
possibly exist. ' ' 

Socrates was a talker, not a writer. To know of 
him is to learn through his cotemporaries and succes- 
sors. A man and his works are necessarily presented 
variously, as the media which reflect them differ. We 
may, in such manner, arrive at proper acquaintance 
with the sage, by catching his expressions as we find 
them in Xenophon, Alcibiades, Plato, Aristotle, and in 
his modern biographers. 

Imprimis, it is not to be said that Socrates origi- 
nated a philosophy. He presents himself simply as a 
man of true and solid judgment; one who, educated- 
and informed in all things of his age, elects to himself 
the duty of a deducer and expounder. "Reason- 
ing," says Locke, "is nothing but the faculty of de- 
ducing unknown truths from principles already known. ' ' 
Socrates was a reasoner, — the reasoner of his age, if 



92 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



not, indeed, of succeeding ages. It was because thus 
he covered all grounds that his position has been so 
variously apportioned. 

Let us here go back a step. The philosophers pre- 
ceding the Sophists found their knowledge in object- 
ivity; that is, they assumed the subordination of subjec- 
tive consciousness to objective actuality. The Sophists, 
denying the power of reason or sense, seeing that in 
words might be found a proof or disproof of assertions 
either of reason or sense, affirmed that any universal 
truth exists not, and that things are as they seem ; that 
any and every individual is a perfect law unto himself 
and for himself, independent of state laws or all associ- 
ations ; that at his own discretion he determines justly 
and truthfully when he decides what is justice and 
goodness. 

For a moment observe the fruits grown of such a 
philosophy. Athens was a city of egotists. Moral 
sentiment was blunted and stifled to such extent that 
the individual good had come to be considered the 
highest good. So unreliable was the virtue of the poli- 
tician, that the principle existed of setting thieves to 
catch thieves. ^'Man," said the Athenian, repeating 
Protagoras, ''is himself the measure of all things;" and 
by the measure of this apophthegm were all things meas- 
ured. Law, where possible, was avoided, for law had 
to the Athenian no sense but that of a coercion, to 
escape which involved no moral sin. Spiritual rules 
had to him no meaning but that of crafty fable in- 
vented for the easy government of the weak-minded. 

That such a state would arise as the result of a preva- 
lent sophism exhibits itself to every mind as a matter 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 93 

of common consequence. The age of sophism is repre- 
sented in the conduct of the Peloponnesian war, and 
may only be reviewed with interest by him who will 
turn to the history of Greece, 

Into such an arena stepped Socrates. His mission 
and work w^re to destroy, — through the exhibition of a 
new expression in the philosophy of objective thought, 
— the sophism of his age j that the true standard of all 
things is not in the Ego, but in the relation of each 
individual Ego to a whole. In other words, Socrates 
had caught the ever-living truth, ''that the true expe- 
rience is the common experience," or, as Schwegler 
expresses it, ''the true standard of all things is not my, 
this single person's, opinion, pleasure, and will; that it 
does not depend on my or any other empirical sub- 
ject's good-will and election what is to be true, right, 
and good ; but that what is to decide here is certainly 
my thought, — that which is rational in me. My 
thought, my reason, however, is not something spe-. 
cially appertaining to me, but something common to 
all rational beings, something universal ; and so far 
as I comport myself as a rational, thinking being, 
my subjectivity is a imiversal subjectivity. But every 
thinking being has the consciousness that what he 
holds for right, duty, good, is not merely so to him, 
but that it is so also for every rational being, and that 
consequently his thought has the character of univer- 
sality, a universal validity, — in a word, objectivity." 

"Man," said Socrates, agreeing with the Sophists, and, 
to such extent, repeating them, — "man is the measure 
of all things," — but man is an Ego within an Ego, a 
universal. A part may not act of itself, but only in the 



94 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

whole in which it has its existence. Here is the Socratic 
text, the foundation upon wliich rest his teachings. 

Socrates, as a first step, attacked the premises of the 
Sophists, and annihilated the school in showing that 
rhetoric was not logic. ''Upon solid premises," he 
said, ''are solid arguments to be alone founded;" and 
demonstrating, sei'iatim, the falsity of position after 
position, he deprived sophism of that upon which it 
rested. The Sophists grouped things; Socrates indi- 
vidualized and defined them. "It requires," says Mr. 
Grote, " some mental effort to see anything important in 
the invention of notions so familiar as those of Genus, 
Definition, Individual Things as comprehended in a 
genus, what each thing is, and to what genus it belongs : 
nevertheless, four centuries before Christ, these terms 
denoted mental processes which few, if any but Socrates, 
had a distinct recognition of, in the form of analytical 
consciousness. ' ' 

" To be good is to be happy," is an aphorism which 
might very well have originated with Socrates. Indeed, 
simple, insignificant, and common as may be deemed 
the expression, it seems to cover the Socratic ground. 
Virtue is knowledge, wisdom is intellectual discern- 
ment. Good is that on which depends uncondition- 
ally the well-being of the individual and of the race. 
To discern good and to practice it was the highest 
study of man ; and it was the highest study because of 
being the road to happiness ; and happiness was the aim 
of life. To know the right and not to practice it 
seemed to Socrates indicative of an absence of intel- 
lectuality which he could scarce conceive in any man 
worthy of being called sane. 



THINKERS AND THINKJNG. 95 

What was the method of Socrates ? The sage taught 
his truths by what is called the maieutic or obstetric art, 
and in negation. Tioith he affirmed to exist in all 
men ; but men, he declared, seemed to require an ac- 
coucheur to bring forth this truth, no less than the 
enceinte demanded the midwife. Socrates likened him- 
self to his mother Ph^narete; "for, if not able to bear 
thoughts myself," said he, ''I am quite able to help 
others to bear them." The nature of such a spiritual 
midwifery will be distinctly seen, suggests Schwegler, 
" if we consider that the philosopher, by means of his 
incessant questionings and the resultant disentangle- 
ment of ideas, possessed the art of eliciting from him 
with whom he conversed a new and previously unknown 
thought, and so of helping to a birth his intellectual 
throes." Asking, for example, a question, Socrates 
would catch the thread of an idea, and, little by little, 
would draw out the full force of the expression, and, 
to the wonderment of the questioned, would show him 
what good, great, or beautiful thing he had produced. 
The means through which he accomplished such end 
seemed to be that of exclusion, of isolating and casting 
aside irrelevant associations. 

Let us make an example. What is justice? would 
ask Socrates. It is law, might answer the questioned. 
Thus then might discourse the sage : Justice is virtue, 
because that in virtue resides right, and in the sense of 
right is love, and love does unto others as it would be 
done by. I define then justice in discovering the 
logical unity of things. Good or right is not an arbi- 
trary law, but the law of relation, — that relation in 
which is found the greatest good of the greatest num- 



95 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

ber : good may be only seeming good ; nothing is good 
which has not breath; that which seems to bless the 
individual in his individuality, and is not of good to 
mankind at large, is not a blessing ; so neither can that 
be justice which treats of aggression without considera- 
tion of aggression in the breadth of its meaning. It is 
not injustice, might Socrates have said, to destroy, at 
whatever cost of individual grievance, him who lives 
through the misfortunes of others. It is not injustice 
to quarantine the pest-ridden ship, even though thereby 
much suffering prevail, because only thus is greater ill 
to be avoided. The meaning of justice lies in the 
notion; the notion of justice is the breadth of its 
expression; the expression is that which constitutes a 
circle of relation. 

Let us take the Socratic tenet of virtue. '^ Virtue 
is an act that proceeds from a clearly understood recog- 
nition of the notion of whatever any particular action 
contemplates, of the ends, means, and conditions that 
belong to this action, and not, therefore, any merely 
innate or mechanically acquired power and ability. 
Action, without perception, is a contradiction, and 
destroys itself; action, with perception, carries straight 
to the mark ; consequently, there can be nothing bad 
that happens with perception, and nothing good that 
happens without perception. Defect of perception it 
is that leads men into vicious acts. There follows from 
this the further proposition, nobody is willingly wicked : 
the wicked are wicked against their own wills ; nay, 
more, whoever knowingly does wrong is better than he 
who does so unknowingly; for in the latter case, as 
knowledge is wanting, virtue in general must also be 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 97 

wanting, while in the former case, were it supposed 
possible, virtue would be only temporarily injured."* 

Another method had Socrates, — the Socratic irony ; 
pretending ignorance, he would draw out the pert 
opinions of men in questions all too readily answered 
without reflection. He would ask, for example, says 
Mr. Grote, "What is democracy? What is law? Every 
man fancied that he could give a confident opinion, 
and even wondered that any person should feel a diffi- 
culty. When Socrates, professing ignorance, put any 
such question, he found no difficulty in obtaining an 
answer, given off-hand and with very little reflection. 
The answer purported to be the explanation or 
definition of a term, familiar, indeed, but of wide 
and comprehensive import, — given by one who had 
never before tried to render to himself an account of 
what it meant. Having got this answer, Socrates put 
fresh questions, applying it to specific cases, to which 
the respondent was compelled to give answers incon- 
sistent with the first j showing that the definition was 
either too narrow, or too wide, or defective in some 
essential condition. The respondent then amended 
his answer ; but this was a prelude to other questions, 
which could only be answered in ways inconsistent with 
the amendment ; and the respondent, after many at- 
tempts to disentangle himself, was obliged to plead 
guilty to inconsistencies, with an admission that he 
could make no satisfactory answer to the original 
query which at first had appeared so easy and familiar. 
. . . The discussion first raised by Socrates turns upon 

* Schvvegler. 



9 8 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

the meaning of some large generic term. The queries 
whereby he follows it up bring the answer given into 
collision with various particulars which it ought not to 
comprehend, or with others which it ought to compre- 
hend but does not. The inconsistencies into which 
the hearer is betrayed in his various answers proclaim 
to him the fact that he has not yet acquired anything 
like a clear and full conception of the common attribute 
which binds together the various particulars embraced 
under some term which is ever upon his lips. He is 
thus put upon the train of thought which leads to a 
correction of the generalization, and lights him on that 
which Plato calls 'seeing the one in the many, and the 
many in the one.' " 

It is to be perceived, in this ability of Socrates to 
show the fallacies of the expressions of his times, that 
necessarily must he have been gifted with higher percep- 
tions than the Sophists he confounded and succeeded, 
differing from them in possessing the rhetoric of their 
logic combined with data of which they knew little. 
From physics he passed to ethics, and was the first to 
give proper expression to the sense of philosophy. To 
know a thing, said Socrates, is to know its essence, is 
to consider it as distinct from all other things, — is to 
define, to demarcate it. 

In no way may one better comprehend the power and 
character of Socrates than in a study of his discourses. 
We append certain of his words to Euthydemus:* 

"Even among all those deities who so liberally be- 
stow on us good things, not one maketh himself an 

'•• Xenophon's Mcinonibilia. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 99 

object of our sight. And he who raised this whole 
universe, and still upholds the mighty frame, who per- 
fected every part of it in beauty and in goodness, suffer- 
ing none of these parts to decay through age, but 
renewing them daily with unfading vigor, whereby they 
are able to execute whatever he ordains with that readi- 
ness and precision which surpass man's imagination; 
even he, the supreme God, who performeth all these 
wonders, still holds himself invisible, and it is only in 
his works that we are capable of admiring him. For 
consider, my Euthydemus, the sun, which seemeth, as 
it were, set forth to the view of all men, yet suffereth 
not itself to be too curiously examined ; punishing those 
with blindness who too rashly venture to do so ; and 
those ministers of the gods, whom they employ to exe- 
cute their bidding, ^remain to us invisible; for though 
the thunderbolt is shot from on high, and breaketh in 
pieces whatever it findeth in its way ; yet no one seeth 
it when it falls, when it strikes, or when it retires : 
neither are the winds discoverable to our sight, though 
we plainly behold the ravages they everywhere make, 
and with ease perceive what time they are rising. And 
if there be anything in man, my Euthydemus, partaking 
of the divine nature, it must surely be the soul which 
governs and directs him, yet no one considers this 
an object of sight. Learn, therefore, not to despise 
those things which you cannot see ; judge of the great- 
ness of the power by the effects which are produced, and 
reverence the Deity." 

But we must leave Socrates, and pass to that which 
comes after him. Upon the death of the sage, which 



loo THINKERS AND THINKING. 

occurred in the year B.C. 399, from poison which he 
was condemned to drink by tliose he sought to benefit,* 
liis companions, who it api:)eared had drawn different 



* In the dialogue of " Crito," by Plato, may one enjoy the influence 
of a great mind. 

Crito, a wealthy disciple of Socrates, has been with the sage through 
his trial, and has insisted on his intention to pay any fine that may be 
imposed. The unexpected sentence of death rendering vain this in- 
tention, Crito, who has obtained admission to the cell of the philos- 
opher, entreats him to use means which he shall devise for his escape. 
Here ensues the famous dialogue ; so concentrated, so forcible, so full 
of meaning in every line, that to epitomize it would be indeed diffi- 
cult. One passage may be given : 

" If, Crito, while we are preparing to run away, or by whatever 
name we should call it, the laws and commonwealth should come, 
and, presenting themselves before us, should say, ' Tell me, Socrates, 
what do you purpose doing? Do you design anything else by this 
proceeding in which you are engaged, than to destroy us, the laws, and 
the whole city, as far as possible ? Or do you think it possible for 
that city any longer to subsist and not be subverted, in which judg- 
ments that are passed have no force, but are set aside by private per- 
sons?' what should we say, Crito, to these and similar remonstrances? 
Shall we say to them that the city has done us an injustice and not 
passed a right sentence? Shall we say this, or what else?" 

"Crito. — This, by Jupiter, Socrates." 

" Socrates. — What, then, if the laws should say, ' Socrates, was 
it not agreed between us that you should abide by the judgment 
which the city should pronounce?' and if we should wonder at their 
speaking thus, perhaps they would say, ' Wonder not, Socrates, at 
what we say, but answer, since you are accustomed to make use of 
questions and answers. For come, what charge have you against us 
and the city, that you attempt to destroy us ? Did we not first give 
you being, and did not your father, throtigh us, take your mother to 
wife, and beget you? Say, then, do you find fault with those laws 
amongst us that relate to marriage, as being bad?' I should say, ' I 
do not find fault with them.' ' Do you with those that relate to your 
nurture when born, and the education with which you are instructed ? 



THINKERS AND THINKING. loi 

results from his teachings, separated themselves, ex- 
pounding views and doctrines which brought to them 
the title of " incomplete Socratists." Of the schools so 
founded there were three, — the Cynic, by Antisthenes ; 
the Cyrenaic, by Aristippus ; and the Megaric, by Eu- 
clid. These schools express not, however, the pro- 
gressiveness of human thought, but rather the absence 



Or did not the laws, ordained on this point, enjoin rightly in requiring 
your father to instruct you in music and gymnastic exercises?' I 
should say, rightly. "^ Well, then, since you were born, nurtured, and 
educated through our means, can you say, first of all, that you are not 
both our offspring and our slave, as well you as your ancestors? And 
if this be so, do you think that there are equal rights between us, and 
whatever we attempt to do to you, do you think you may justly do to 
uS in return ? Or had you not equal rights with your father, or mas- 
ter, if you happened to have one, so as to return what you suffered, 
neither to .retort when found fault with, nor when stricken to strike 
again, nor many other things of the kind; but that with your country 
and the laws you may do so ; so that if we attempt to destroy you, 
thinking it to be just, you also should endeavor, as far as you are able, 
in return to destroy us, the laws, and your country? and in doing this 
will you say that you act justly, — you who in reality make virtue your 
chief object? Or are you so wise as not to know that one's country 
is more honorable, venerable, and sacred, and more highly prized 
both by gods and men possessed of understanding, than mother and 
father and all other progenitors, and that one ought to reverence, 
submit to, and appease one's country when angry, rather than one's 
father, and either persuade it or do what it orders ; and to suffer quietly 
if it bids one suffer, whether to be beaten or put in bonds ; or if it 
sends one out to battle, there to be wounded or slain, this must be 
done, for justice so requires. And one must not give way, or re- 
treat, or leave one's post ; but that both in war, and in a court of jus- 
tice, and everywhere, one must do what one's duty and country 
enjoin, or persuade it in such manner as justice allows ; but that to 
offer violence either to one's mother or father is not holy, much less to 
one's country.' " 



102 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

of a master whose place there is none to take ; and so 
indeed does it continue to be until the appearance of 
Christ, who, viewed in a strictly philosophical sense, is 
the true successor of Socrates. 

Antisthenes, who, before his relation with Socrates, 
was a disciple of Gorgias and a sophistic teacher, 
founded a school in Cynosarges, and seemed to fall 
back into the Epicurean signification. With Socrates, 
he taught that virtue was the highest happiness, and 
that morality was the ultimate aim of the life of a man. 
The ideal of virtue, ' ' as it was before him in the person 
of Socrates, consisted for him only in freedom from de- 
sires (in his very exterior he imitated the beggar, car- 
rying staff and wallet), and consequently in the neglect 
of all other spiritual interests. Virtue to him only 
directed to the avoidance of evil ; that is to say, of 
those desires and greeds which bind us to engagements. 
The wise man is to him sufficient for himself, indepen- 
dent of all, indifferent to marriage, family, and state, 
to riches, honor, and enjoyment," The Cynics sought 
a short cut to happiness, and thought they found it "in 
a life according to nature ; that is, in seclusion to self, 
in complete independency and freedom from desire, in 
renunciation of art and science, and of every definite 
end in general." The wise man, they said, is master 
over all his desires and wants ; without weakness ; free 
from the fetters of societary law and societary custom \ 
the peer of the gods. An easy life, Diogenes averred, 
is assigned by the gods to him who restricts himself to 
what is necessary, and this true philosophy is attainable 
by every one through endurance and the power of re- 
nunciation. Antisthenes it was, it is remembered, to 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



103 



whom Socrates said, ''I can see thy pride through the 
holes of thy robe."* 

Antisthenes might not, in his capacity of Cynic, 
overcome the Socratic leaven within him ; indeed, 
according to Diogenes Laertius, he came nearer the 
Socratic mind than perhaps any of the successors of the 
philosopher. His nature may best be shown in some of 
his expressions. Being once told that Plato spoke ill of 
him, he replied, '^ It is a royal privilege to do well and 
to be spoken evil of." Being once reproached as not 
being the son of two free citizens, he said, "And I am 
not the son of two people skilled in wrestling ; never- 
theless, I am a skillful wrestler. ' ' When he was asked 
why he reproved his pupils with bitter language, he 
said, '' Physicians, too, use severe remedies for their 
patients." ''Better is it," he w-as wont to say, ''to 
fall among crows than among flatterers ; for that they 
only devour the dead, but the other devour the living." 
He once said to a youth from Pontus, who was on the 
point of coming to him to be his pupil, and was asking 
him what things he wanted, "You want a new book, 
and a new pen, and a new tablet," meaning a new 
mind. A favorite saying of his was, "That envious 
people were devoured by their own dispositions, just as 
iron is by rust." Another v/as, " That those who wish 
to be immortal ought to live piously and justly." 
" Cities," he was wont to say, "are ruined when they 
are unable to distinguish worthless citizens from vir- 
tuous ones. ' ' He used to advise the Athenians to pass 
a vote that asses were horses j and as they thought that 

■?■ Schwegler. 



I04 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



irrational, he said, "Why, those whom you make gen- 
erals have never learnt to be really generals." 

To the school of the Cynics Diogenes of Sinope — 
— the witty philosopher, as he is called — attached him- 
self. This is the Cynic who lived in the tub, and who, 
in his ninetieth year, w^as found by his friends lying 
dead under a portico, choked to death, as some say, in 
greedily devouring a neat's-foot raw. " Our philos- 
ophy," says Diogenes, "differs from that of Socrates, 
inasmuch as we practice, while he alone taught." But 
Diogenes, as well as his master Antisthenes, was a 
fanatic. He might not, from his very nature, live in 
the virtue of Socrates. For all, however, is there a 
lesson in the practice of the Cynics. Antisthenes, ac- 
cording to his biographers, differed markedly from 
Socrates in conceiving he practiced virtue in subjecting 
himself to the vicissitudes of life. Socrates accepted 
and endured them. Antisthenes thought he could 
only preserve his virtue by becoming a savage. He 
wore no garment except a coarse cloak, renounced all 
diet but the simplest, and ma.de his manners correspond 
with his appearance ; being stern, reproachful, bitter 
in language, careless and indecent in his gestures. His 
contempt for sensual enjoyment was so great that Ritter 
expresses him. as saying, "He had rather go mad than 
experience pleasure;" an expression modified by 
Lewes, who translates him as asserting that he would 
rather be mad than sensual. 

Diogenes, the pupil, and the only friend who re- 
mained with the master through a weary struggle with 
death, was the son of an affluent banker accused of 
debasing coin. From the height of splendor Eubu- 



THIXKERS AXD THIXKIXG. 105 

lides describes him as being suddenly reduced to 
squalid poverty. Antisthenes proclaiming the mag- 
nificence of poverty, Diogenes was attracted. ''Poor, 
he was ready to embrace the philosophy of poverty ; 
an outcast, he was ready to isolate himself from so- 
ciety ; branded with disgrace, he was ready to shelter 
himself under a philosophy which branded all society. ' ' 
Having in his own person experienced how little 
wealth and luxury can do for the happiness of man, he 
was the more inclined to try the converse. Having 
experienced how wealth prompts to vice, and how 
desires generate desires, he was willing to try the effect 
of poverty and virtue. He went to Antisthenes — was 
refused. He continued to offer himself to the Cynic 
as a scholar. The Cynic raised his knotty staff, and 
threatened to strike him if he did not depart. 
"Strike," replied Diogenes: "you will not find a 
stick hard enough to conquer my perseverance. ' ' An- 
tisthenes, overcome, accepted him as a pupil.* 

In the jMegaric philosophy we are told that Diogenes 
found first the remedy for his poverty in seeing a mouse 
running about, having care neither for bed, nor to avoid 
the light, neither seeking any of those things which are 
supposed to be enjoyable to such an animal. He was, 
according to the account of some people, the first to 
double up his cloak out of necessity, and who slept in 
it ; and who carried a wallet, in which he kept his food ; 
and who used whatever place was near for all sorts of 
purposes, — eating, and sleeping, and conversing in it. 
In reference to which habits he used to say, pointing to 

* Diogenes Laertius. 



io6 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

the Colonnade of Jupiter and to the Public Magazine, 
" that the Athenians had built him places to live in." 

Diogenes is interesting and instructive to the moderns 
not more from the austerity of his life than in the pith 
and force of the numberless sayings with which he is 
accredited. 

In virtue, he affirmed, lies the source of happiness ; 
but the virtue of Diogenes impresses as being of the 
negative rather than of the positive character. His body 
he regarded as the ''sink of all iniquity;" he therefore 
felt that virtue was practiced in mortifying it. He ate 
little, and that little of the coarsest ; raw meat and un- 
cooked vegetables constituted his most frequent diet. 

Learning of Diogenes of Sinope through him of 
Laertes, we have before us a witty and eccentric rhap- 
sodist, found continuously upon the streets, whose chief 
business is seen to lie in exposing and deriding what 
he deems to be follies. That he was of wonderful per- 
suasive power is instanced, among other ways, by the 
following anecdote. An ^ginetan, having two sons, 
sent one of them, Androsthenes, that he might follow 
after and pick up the words of wisdom as uttered by 
Diogenes ; so impressed was this youth that the brother 
was sent for ; and after him followed the father ; — all 
remaining to study philosophy at the feet of the sage. 

Whether or not Diogenes ever wrote books, seems a 
matter of much dispute, as many as twenty-one being 
credited to him by some authors, others denying his 
authorship of even a single volume. 

In the simplicity of the expressions of the money- 
changer's son lies that which most commends his 
truths. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



107 



'^ Two kinds of exercise there were, he was wont to 
teach : that of the mind and that of the body ; and 
that the latter of these created in the mind such quick 
and agile phantasies at the time of its performance as 
very much facilitated the practice of virtue, but that 
one was imperfect without the other, since the health 
and vigor necessary for the practice of what is good 
depend equally on both mind and body. And he used 
to allege as proofs of this, and of the ease which prac- 
tice imparts to acts of virtue, that people could see 
that, in the case of mere common w^orking trades and 
other employments of that kind, the artisans arrived at 
no inconsiderable accuracy by constant practice ; and 
that any one may see how much one flute-player, or 
one wTestler, is superior to another, by his own con- 
tinued practice. And that if these men transferred the 
same training to their minds, they w^ould not labor in 
a profitless or imperfect manner. He used to say, also, 
that there was nothing whatever in life which could be 
brought to perfection without practice, and that that 
alone was able to overcome obstacles ; that therefore, 
as we ought to repudiate all useless toils, and to apply 
ourselves to useful labors, and to live happily, we are 
only unhappy in consequence of most exceeding folly. 
For the very contempt of pleasure, if we only inure 
ourselves to it, is very pleasant. And just as they who 
are accustomed to live luxuriously are brought very 
unwillingly to adopt the contrary system, so they who 
have been originally inured to that opposite system feel 
a sort of pleasure in the contempt of pleasure." 

He used to say "that when in the course of his life 
he beheld pilots, and physicians, and philosophers, he 



io8 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

thought man the wisest of animals; but when again he 
beheld interpreters of dreams, and soothsayers, and 
those who listened to them, and men puffed up with 
glory or riches, then he thought that there was not a 
more foolish animal than man." 

^'The mathematicians," said he, ''keep their eyes 
fixed on the sun and moon, and overlook what is under 
their feet. ' ' 

"Men contend with one another in punching and 
kicking, but no one shows emulation in the pursuit of 
virtue." 

"Wonder is to be expressed at the grammarians who 
are so desirous to learn everything about the misfortunes 
of Ulysses, yet are ignorant of their own." 

"Men are wrong in complaining of fortune; for 
they ask of the gods what appear to be good things, 
not what are really so. ' ' 

The doctrine of the Cynics is very well represented 
in the answer of Diogenes to one who was arguing in 
support of the notion of Zeno of Elea respecting the 
impossibility of movement. After patient listening, 
the philosopher rose and walked. "Facts," he said, 
"are more convincing than words."* 

Plato. — From this limited epitome of the incomplete 
Socratists we may pass to one of not less common fame, 
Plato, the completed Socratist, as he is called ; he who 
objectivized the system of his master, conciliating and 

"*■ Not less impressive is the reply of the Cynic to Plato's definition of 
a man. " Alan," said Plato, addressing his scholars, " is a two-legged 
thing without feathers." "Behold," interrupted Diogenes, holding 
up a fowl which he had plucked, — "behold Plato's mar." 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 109 

fusing all previous philosophy, — forming with Socrates, 
as Mr. Emerson says, ''the double star which the most 
powerful instruments will not entirely separate." To 
all men is known the name of Plato. That he, like 
Socrates, was a great and worthy thinker and guide, to 
whom his age, — as have after-ages, — turned for instruc- 
tion, guidance, and comfort, is evident enough in the 
persistence of a reputation scarcely less bright to-day 
than two thousand years back. 

Who, and what, was Plato ? 

''Among books," says Mr. Emerson, commencing 
his most admirable essay, "The Philosopher," "Plato 
only is entitled to Omar's fanatical complirhent to the 
Koran, when he said, ' Burn the libraries ; for their 
value is in this book.' These sentences contain the 
culture of nations ; these are the corner-stone of schools ; 
these are the fountain-head of literatures. A discipline 
it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry, lan- 
guage, rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. 
There never was such a range of speculation. Out of 
Plato come all things that are still written and debated 
among men of thought. Great havoc makes he among 
our originalities. We have reached the mountain from 
which all these drift boulders have been detached. The 
Bible of the learned for twenty-two hundred years, 
every brisk young man, who says in succession fine 
things to each reluctant generation, — Boethius, Rabelais, 
Erasmus, Bruno, Locke, Rousseau, Alfieri, Coleridge, — 
is some reader of Plato, translating into the vernacular, 
wittily, his good things. Even the men of grander 
proportion suffer some deduction from the misfortune, 
shall I say, of coming after this exhausting generalizer. 



no THINKERS AND THINKING. 

St. Augustine, Copernicus, Newton, Behmen, Sweden- 
borg, Goethe, are likewise his debtors, and must say 
after him." 

To Plato, says Cato, when surrounded by the wrecks 
made in the contentions of Pompey and Csesar, I 
turn for the consolation which lives only in the 
Ph^do. 

''Writings," says Dr. Thomas, which have ''inspired 
the souls of so many thousands with loftier aspirations 
and with a more earnest love of virtue, may be truly 
said to have borne fruit of the most precious kind, 
compared with which the boasted products of the 
Baconian philosophy are little better than the apples 
of the Dead Sea. ' ' 

Plato, who is variously named Aristocles, after his 
grandfather, and Plato, from broadness of forehead 
(TzXazoq, broad), was born, according to some writers 
in Athens, to others in the island of ^gina, about the 
year B.C. 429. This family seems to have been of the 
highest distinction ; Aristo, his father, being a descend- 
ant of Codrus, the last king of Athens, and his mother, 
Perictione, related to Solon the lawgiver. 

Commingled in the history of his early life seems to 
be quite as much of fiction as of fact, and it is not until 
his twentieth year, at which period his fame associates 
with that of Socrates, that we come reliably to trace 
his history. Among many curious anecdotes connected 
with the early life of Plato, it is related that "while an 
infant, as he was one day sleeping in a bower on Mount 
Hymettus, a number of bees, dropping honey, settled 
upon his lips, thus foreshadowing the extraordinary 
sweetness of his eloquence." In another story, his 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



Ill ^ 



future greatness was foreshown by a dream of Socrates, 
who saw in his sleep a young swan coming from the 
grove of Academus; after nestling in his bosom, it 
soared aloft, singing sweetly as it rose. The next 
morning, just as Socrates had finished relating his dream, 
Aristo presented himself, leading by the hand young 
Plato, whom he wished to place under the instruction 
of that distinguished sage. 

Authorities seem very universally to agree that Plato 
was a remarkable example of ' ' that universal culture 
which characterized the best period of ancient Greece," 
— what in these modern days would be termed a read 
man, in contradistinction to the sciolist. And when it 
is recollected that his early life is contemporaneous 
with the period of the Peloponnesian war, a period 
representing the most brilliant epoch of Grecian 
thought and action, it is understood what these attain- 
ments must have been. "Skilled was he," says one 
biographer, "not only to write epic poems, tragedies, 
dithyrambics, lyrics, and epigrams, but sufficiently 
skilled in gymnastics to contend at the Pythian and 
Isthmian games. An epigram preserved of Plato reads 
thus, — 

" ' Thou gazest on the stars. Ah, would I were the skies, 
That I might gaze on thee with all my thousand eyes !' " 

An Athenian soldier was Plato, " necessarily made 
so," says Mr. Grote,^ "as much by his own disposi- 
tion as by the exigencies of his times. The years 
409-403 B.C. were years of extraordinary character. 

••■ History of Greece. 



112 THINKERS AND THINKING, 

They included the most strenuous public efforts, the 
severest suffering, and the gravest political revolution 
that has ever occurred in Athens. Every Athenian 
citizen was of necessity put upon constant (almost 
daily) military duty, either abroad or in Attica against 
the Lacedaemonian garrison established in the perma- 
nent fortified post of Dekelea, within sight of the 
Athenian Acropolis. Following the crushing defeat 
of the Athenians at yEgospotamos, came the terrible 
apprehension at Athens ; then the long blockade and 
famine of the city, wherein many died of hunger ; 
next the tyranny of the Thirty, who, among their 
other oppressions, made war upon all free speech, and 
silenced even the voice of Socrates j then the gallant 
resistance of Thrasybulus, followed by the intervention 
of the Lacedaemonians, — contingencies full of uncer- 
tainty and terror, but ending in the restoration of the 
democracy. 

"From all this danger, fatigue, and suffering of 
such an historical decade no Athenian citizen could 
escape, whatever might be his feeling towards the 
existing democracy, or however averse he might be to 
public employment by natural temper. But Plato was 
not thus averse during the earlier years of his adult 
life. On the contrary, he felt strongly the impulse 
of political ambition usual with Athenians of good 
family. ' ' 

Plato, however, was soon to be disenchanted of the 
glamour of position sought to be thrown about him 
through the influence of powerful relatives and friends 
connected with the new oligarchy. Opposed, as he 
had affirmed himself, to the democracy, he had entered 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



1^3 



the new scheme of government with the full hope, as 
Grote expresses it, "of seeing justice and wisdom 
predominant ;" but an injustice which sought to iden- 
tify a Socrates with murder, and an absence of judg- 
ment which hushed the colloquial discourses with 
young men which were such an educational influence 
in Athens, might not but disgust as well as '' mortify 
and disappoint" one so allied with the sense of right 
and intelligence. 

In his twentieth year Plato commenced to attend 
the teachings of Socrates, and continued among the 
most fervent of disciples until the death of the master, 
which occurred B.C. 399. Leaving at this period 
Athens, the philosopher is found first in Megara, visit- 
ing Euclid. From here he passes to Egypt, "where, 
while studious youth were crowding to Athens from 
every quarter in search of Plato for a master, this 
meditative man is found wandering along the banks of 
the Nile, or the vast plains of a barbaric country, him- 
self a disciple to the old men of Egypt." 

Returning from his travels (b.c. 386), Plato, who 
had come into possession of a small house about a mile 
from Athens, on the road to Eleusis, opened here that 
school of philosophy which has contributed more to the 
fame of his city than have all its hard-fought battles, 
— "a school," says Mr. Lewes, " around which have 
often hovered the longing thoughts of posterity as the 
centre of myriad associations. Poets have sung of it, 
philosophers have sighed for it, — 

" The olive grove of Academe, 
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird 
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long." 



114 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



Unheeding now the inscription over the door of the 
little academy, ' ' Let none but geometricians enter here, ' ' 
let us pass in together, that we may know of Plato. 

From his master Socrates did Plato much differ in 
his manner of teaching. The one sought the excite- 
ment of the streets, there holding discourse ; the other, 
in studious retirement, held direct communion alone 
in most formal manner with those who were his im- 
mediate disciples. Plato wrote much, and, recognizing, 
with Socrates, that books might not answer interroga- 
tions, sought, in his writings, to anticipate interroga- 
tions : hence the apparent repetitions of his sentiments 
and endless variety of his significations. 

To comprehend Plato, it is to be recognized that his 
philosophy is evolutional from that which had gone 
before, "historical development," as Schwegler terms 
it ; a broad thinker, made familiar with logic by his 
master Socrates, learned in the mysteries of the schools, 
and practical by the usages of travel. The philosopher 
sat him down in academic shades, and thought away 
life, leaving, however, for those who were to come 
after, the wisdom of what had gone before. Plato, in 
the example of his own life, leaves to posterity the 
lesson of a course which makes man in his fullness. 
Thus we find in him represented the seasons of pre- 
paration, development, fructuation, — '' the Lehrjahre, 
Wanderjahre, Meisterjahre," as one of his biographers 
expresses him. 

The first period represents with Plato, as with all 
men, the perceptions of practical wisdom. As a phys- 
icist he was of the Ionic school. He beheld things as 
they existed to the senses, and sought in the senses the 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



1^5 



explanation of being. As a polemic, he discusses not 
the mysteries of sophism, but writes a '' Charmides,*' 
which considers temperance; a ''Lysis," which treats 
of friendship ;" a "Laches," presenting fortitude. 

Passing from the first to the second period, the 
reader becomes struck with the expression of develop- 
ment,^ — the conjoining of ethics with physics, the merg- 
ing of what may be called common knowledge into the 
philosophical. This is expressed in the ''Progress- 
ive Dialogues" — the Gorgias, Thesetetus, Sophistes, 
Phgedo, the Hippias Major, Clitophon, and other 
works. This second period represents passage from 
practice to theory. Thus, accepting the "Thesetetus," 
a polemic against the Protagorean idea of cognition, or 
relativity of all knowledge, etc., we find Plato seeking 
to discover an absolute principle underlying logical 
ideas, to "establish the objectivity of truth;" seeking 
a oneness. 

The "Phaedrus," terminating with the Republic and 
the Timaeus, exhibits that third period in which the 
philosopher, learned of all schools and instructed of 
all travel, stretches the wide-grown wings, seeking to 
read the mysteries of the infinite, losing himself, in a 
sense, to himself and to his fellow-men, in that ether 
which mocks the gaze of the finite ; failing not in him- 
self, but in the inability of his fellow-men to reach 
that goal of self-abnegation which might alone render 
his republic a possibility. 

Thus it is, at least, that Plato classifies himself to the 
mind of the writer, for thus he steps not aside from 
what seems the beaten track of the progressive thinker. 
Van Heusden, however, seems to transpose these con- 



Ii6 rillNKERS AND THINKING. 

ceptions of the philosopher. Thus he alike expresses 
the three periods, yet renders of them the following 
expression : i. Epistles wherein the subject-matter 
treats of the beautiful. 2. Those wherein it relates to 
the true. 3. Those wherein it relates to the practical. 
'^Of the first are those concerning love, beauty, and 
the soul. Of the second, those concerning dialectics, 
ideas, method, in which truth and the means of at- 
taining it are sought. Of the third, those concerning 
justice, i.e. morals and politics. These three classes 
represent the three phases of the philosophical mind, — 
the desire for truth, the appreciation of truth, and the 
realization of it in an application to human life."* 

Of what are called practical philosophers, such a 
division of their distinctions would naturally be made, 
but of the philosophers of the Platonic type it may not 
be at all affirmed. Such men do truly grow into the 
practical, but such practicality consists not in confining 
knowledge to the ways of common men, which ways 
are the ways of the world, but rather in conforming 
learning to that true conception which sees deeper than 
the gloss of the tinsel ; advancing, not from the beau- 
tiful to the practical, but from the practical to the 
beautiful. 

A philosopher grows into self-abnegation. The con- 
sciousness of a material importance, or of a material 
individuality, may not possibly remain to a true and 
full thinker. So, passing to the "Republic" of Plato, 
we find a state derided by men as Utopian, and as his 



* Van Heusden : Initia Philosophiae Platonicae. As quoted by Mr. 
G. H. Lewes. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



117 



times existed and the present times exist, really so ; 
not, however, from the reality of facts, but from the 
reality of conditions. '' Such as are fit to govern, into 
their composition has the informing Deity mingled 
gold ; into the military silver ; iron and brass for hus- 
bandmen and artificers." Yet in culture found Plato 
the hand which distributed. Is this the truth, or is the 
truth with Socrates? " Theages, it will be with thee 
as God wills. If some have grown wise by associating 
with me, no thanks are due to me, but all is w^ith God. 
If it is his will, then shall you make great and rapid 
proficiency. You will not if it does not please him. ' ' 

Plato, affirmed the ancients, gathered to himself all 
philosophy which had preceded him, and from the 
possession of such knowledge founded the superstruc- 
ture upon which to rear his own deductions. Thus 
understanding the sophistical notion of the identifica- 
tion ''of virtue and of pleasure, of the good and the 
agreeable," or, what Schwegler calls the same thing, 
against the affirmation of an absolute moral relativity, he 
writes his ' ' Gorgias, ' ' a dialogue designed to show that 
virtue is a something in itself, ''not owing its origin 
to the rights of the stronger or the caprice of the sub- 
ject, but a standard of good, to which, when conflict 
exists, the standard of pleasure is to give way." 

"Plato," says Mr. Emerson, "like every great man, 
consumed his own times. What is a great man but 
one of great affinities, who takes up into himself all 
arts, sciences, all knowables, as his food? He can 
spare nothing ; he can dispose of everything. What 
is not good for virtue is good for knowledge. Hence 
his cotemporaries tax him with plagiarism. But the 



Il8 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

inventor only knows how to borrow ) and society is 
glad to forget the innumerable laborers who ministered 
to this architect, and reserves all its gratitude for him. 
When we are praising Plato, it seems we are praising 
quotations from Solon, and Sophron, and Philolaus. 
Be it so. Every book' is a quotation ; and every house 
is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone- 
quarries ; and every man is a quotation from all his 
ancestors. And this grasping inventor puts all nations 
under contribution. Plato absorbed the learning of his 
times, — Philolaus, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and what 
else ; then his master, Socrates ; and, finding himself still 
capable of a larger synthesis, beyond all examples then 
or since, he traveled into Italy, to gain what Pythagoras 
had for him ; then into Egypt, and perhaps still farther 
east, to import the other element, which Europe wanted, 
into the European mind. This breadth entitles him to 
stand as the representative of philosophy." 

Plato, being, as it were, an encyclopedia of what was 
and what had gone before, brought to the comprehen- 
sion of things the principles of analysis and synthesis, 
— understanding a thing by the taking of it apart, and 
proving an inference by the putting of the thing toge- 
ther. Thus, if virtue is the subject, the many things 
which constitute virtue are to be considered ; in the man 
is to be seen the oneness ; in the oneness are to be appre- 
ciated the many. To detect the one in the many is the 
constant aim of Plato. " He was always interrogating 
the meaning of general terms and abstractions embraced 
in popular language; in all his dialogues, no matter 
how various their object and opinion, he is always found 
insisting on the relation of universals to particulars." 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



119 



In examining the expressions of Plato, one does 
not seem to be able to find any special system. A 
mind which had so long recognized the fallacies of 
thinkers might not perhaps but doubt its own accuracy. 
"Plato," says Cicero, "affirms nothing; but, after 
producing many arguments, and examining a question 
on every side, leaves it undetermined." Cicero, how- 
ever, Hegel would say, could not comprehend Plato, 
because of not knowing what constitutes philosophy. 

"After having read every one of Plato's Dialogues," 
says Mr. George Henry Lewes,* " an excessively weari- 
some labor, and done my best to arrive at a distinct 
understanding of their purpose, I come to the conclu- 
sion that he never systematized his thoughts, but allowed 
free play to skepticism, taking opposite sides in every 
debate, because- he had no steady conviction to guide 
him ; unsaying to-day what he said yesterday, satisfied 
to show the weakness of an opponent. Mr. Grote, who 
accepts the Epistles as genuine, relies on their declara- 
tion that the highest principles of philosophy could not 
be set forth in writing so as to be intelligible to ordi- 
nary minds; only a few could apprehend them, and 
they only through an illumination kindled by multi- 
plied debate and much mental effort. I have never 
written anything on these subjects ; there neither is, 
nor shall there ever be, any treatise of Plato. ' ' The 
opinions called by the name of Plato are those of 
Socrates in his days of youthful vigor and glory. The 
opinions called by the name of Plato are opinions dra- 
matically put forth as dialectical displays. Certain it 

* History of Philosophy. 



I20 TIIINIvERS AND THINKING. 

is that nowhere, in his own name, does he express 
opinions, nor did he ever compose a treatise. 

''Was this reserve," queries Mr. Lewes, ''owing to 
philosophical incompetence ? Did he withhold a sys- 
tem because in truth he had no system to produce? 
It seems to me that he taught nothing decisively, 
because, like many other active skeptical intellects, he 
was afraid of committing himself. And, like many 
others, he concealed his own vacillation by assuming a 
native incompetence in the public. Plato was not 
wanting in dogmatic impulse, but he was unable 
patiently to think out a system ; and the vacillating 
lights which shifted constantly before him, the very 
skejDticism which gave such a dramatic flexibility to 
his genius, made him aware that any afflrmation he 
could make was liable to be perplexed by cross-lights 
or would admit of unanswerable objections. It is not, 
however, to be affirmed of this that it was intellectual 
weakness ; perhaps rather was it intellectual strength 
which determined his reserve. At any rate, it was phi- 
losophical incompetence. Partly owing to his acute- 
ness, and partly to his skepticism, he could nowhere 
find firm ground and solid material. The guesses of 
to-day were likely to be rejected for the guesses of to- 
morrow; and, in the absence of any positive criterion, 
philosophy could only proceed upon guesses. A man 
of narrower or more impassioned intellect would have 
resolutely seized on some of the cardinal notions with 
which Plato dallied, and, like Plotinus, would have 
built a system of them. An intellect of greater organ- 
izing power — like Aristotle — would have settled a few 
premises once for all, and from them deduced a scheme 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 121 

of the universe. But Plato was essentially a dialecti- 
cian. His intellect delighted in the play of ideas. At 
a time when schemes of the universe were so easy, and 
when proof was rarely demanded, he could content 
himself with no scheme, because he felt clearly that 
proof was needed and saw that he had none to furnish. 
Add to this the native dramatic disposition of his mind, 
and a certain emotional susceptibility which made him 
peculiarly liable to what may be called the mythic mi- 
rage, and we may understand how he was indisposed to 
scientific clearness. Tradition, theology, and poetry 
were always struggling in his mind with dialectics. ' ' 

Plato, then, we are to view as an evolutionist. Let 
us see how he thought ; for, having from him no system, 
we are only thus' to know him. 

Everything, says Plato, esteemed by us as real is, in 
truth, the unreal ; that which is deemed the unreal is 
alone the real. The real, as man calls it, is phenome- 
nal ; but the true real is idea. Matter is the copy of 
the idea. Thus also thought the philosophers who pre- 
ceded Plato ; that is, all believed that in all things 
were combined matter and form. But the evolution of 
Plato consisted in recognizing the entity entirely inde- 
pendent of the matter. 

"According to the Platonic sense, adopted by Kant 
and Cousin, ideas are as it were the essence and matter 
of our intelligence. They are not, as such, a product 
or result of intelligence. They are its primitive ele- 
ments, and at the same time the immediate object of 
its activity. They are the primary anticipations which 
the mind brings to all its cognitions, the principles and 
laws by which it conceives of beings and things. The 

9 



122 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

mind does not create ideas, it creates by means of 
ideas." 

" Suppose," says Plato, " a man in a dark cave, en- 
tirely ignorant of the external world, having a bright 
light shining behind him, while between him and the 
light there continually passes a procession of men, ani- 
mals, trees, etc. The moving shadows of these things 
would be projected on the wall of the cavern, and the 
man would suppose that the shadows were realities."* 



* Another illustration we may take from the " Republic." 

" Idea is the essence or reality of a thing. For instance, there is a 
multiplicity of beds and tables. 

" Certainly. 

" But these two kinds are comprised, one under the idea of a bed, 
and the other luider the idea of a table? 

"Without doubt. 

"And we say that the carpenter who makes one of these articles 
makes the bed or the table according to the idea he has of each. 
For he does not make the idea itself. That is impossible. 

" Truly, that is impossible. 

"Well, now, what name shall we bestow on the workman whom 
I am now going to name? 

" What workman ? 

" Him who makes what all the other workmen make separately. 

" You speak of a powerful man. 

" Patience! You will admire him still more. This workman has not 
only the talent of making all the works of art, but also all the works of 
nature, plants, animals, everything else,— in a word, himself. He makes 
the heaven, the earth, the gods, everything in heaven, earth, or hell. 

" You speak of a wonderful workman, truly. 

" You seem to doubt me. But tell me, do you think there is no such 
workman? or do you think that in one sense any one could do all this, 
but in another no one could ? Could you not yourself succeed in a 
certain way ? 

" In what way ? 

" It is not difficult ; it is often done, and in a short time. Take a 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



123 



Passing to the ''Timgeus," we find types — ideas — 
made pre-existent to this great workman, God creating 
the world from types, as from types are created by man 
the things of this world. 

With Mr. Lewes, the author has also read the Dia- 
logues of Plato ; but not with Mr. Lewes is it to be 
agreed that the reading is a wearisome labor. Quite 
the reverse. It is as the exhilaration of mountain air ; 
it is being raised out of the littleness and meanness of 
every-day living into the atmosphere of the higher 
something. Yet, for all, is there ever present the con- 
viction that it is Socrates Ave associate ivith, and not 
Plato j not because that in character Socrates is made 
the oracle, but the rather because of what, by some 
inexpressible internal knowledge, we seem to know of 
Socrates. In other words, w^hat is Plato seems to be 



mirror and turn it round on all sides. In an instant you will have 
made the sun and stars, the earth, yourself, the animals and plants, 
works of art, and all we mentioned. 

" Yes, the images, the appearances, but not the real things. 

" Very well ; you comprehend my opinion. The painter is a work- 
man of this class, is he not? 

" Certainly. 

" You will tell me that he makes nothing real, although he makes a 
bed in a certain way?" 

" Yes ; but it is only an appearance, an image. 

"And the carpenter ; did. you not allow that the bed which he made 
was not the idea which we call the essence of the bed, the real bed, but 
only a certain bed ? 

" I said so, indeed. 

" If, then, he does not make the idea of the bed, he makes nothing 
real, but only something which represents that which really exists. 
And, if any one maintains that the carpenter's work has a real exist- 
ence, he will be in error." 



124 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

Socrates confused, — Plato (shall we say ?) put into the 
place of Protagoras. 

As an expression of an outlook of certain of the 
pre-Christian philosophers, mention may be made par- 
ticularly of the "Phaedo," one of the dialogues of 
Plato, i.e. the conversation of Socrates with Cebes 
and Simmias on the immortality of the soul, which 
conversation occurs on the day of the death of the 
philosopher. Neither to the reader nor to Plato would 
it, however, be just to garble so grand a work by offer- 
ing it in extracts. It is only to be received in the 
whole, not one word being taken from, neither one 
added to, it. ''Philosophy," the work begins by 
asserting, ''is nothing else than a preparation for and 
meditation on death. Death and philosophy have this 
in common : death separates the soul from the body, 
philosophy draws off the mind from bodily things to 
the contemplation of truth and virtue ; for he is not 
a true philosopher who is led away by bodily pleasures, 
since the senses are the sources of ignorance and all 
evil. The mind, therefore, is entirely occupied in 
meditating on death and in freeing itself as much as 
possible from the body. How, then, can such a man 
be afraid of death ? He who grieves at the approach 
of death cannot be a true lover of wisdom, but is a 
lover of his body. And, indeed, most men are tem- 
perate through intemperance ; that is to say, they 
abstain from some pleasures that they may the more 
easily and permanently enjoy others. They embrace a 
shadow of virtue, not virtue itself, since they estimate 
the value of all things by the pleasure they afford; 
whereas the philosopher purifies his mind from all such 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 125 

things, and pursues virtue and wisdom for their own 
sakes."* 

He who would see the views of Plato epitomized will 
find no better author than Diogenes Laertius. We epit- 
omize this epitome. Plato affirmed that the soul was 
immortal, and clothed successively in many bodies, and 
he defined it as an abstract idea of spirit diffused in 
every direction. He said also that it was threefold 
and self-moving ; for that that part of it which was 
capable of reasoning was situated in the head, that 
portion which was affected by passion was seated around 
the heart, and that which was appetitive was placed 
around the navel and the liver ; and that it is placed in 
the middle of the body, and embraces it at the same 
time in all its parts ; and that it consists of elements. 

Two primary causes or principles of things are there, 
God and matter, which are to be esteemed the mind 
and cause. Matter is something without shape and 
without limitation; from it all concretions arise; it 
moved about at random until it was brought by God 
into one settled place. Nature is divided into four 
elements, fire, water, air, and earth. 

Moreover, the world is one, and has been produced, 
since it has been made by God in such manner as to 
be an object of sensation ; it is illimitable, because the 
model after w^hich it was made was one ; and it is 
spherical, because its creator was of that form ; for it 
also contains all other animals, and God who made it 
comprises all forms. The world is imperishable, because 
it cannot be resolved into God ; and God is the cause 

* Introduction to the " Phasdo," Gary's translation. 



126 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

of universal production, because it is the nature of the 
good to be productive of good ; and the best is the 
cause of the production of heaven ; for the best of all 
productions can have no other cause than the best of 
all intelligible existences. And since God is of that 
character, and since heaven resembles the best, inas- 
much as it is at least the most beautiful of all things, 
it cannot be like anything else that is produced, except 
God. 

Of fire, water, air, and earth, is the world composed : 
of fire, in order that it may be visible ; of earth, in 
order that it may be firm ; of water and air, that it may 
not be destitute of proportion. In short, the world is 
formed of all the elements together, in order that it 
may be perfect and imperishable. 

Time is the image of eternity ; eternity subsists for- 
ever ; but the motion of the heaven is time ; for day 
and night, and theHiionths, and all such divisions, are 
parts of time, on which account there could be no such 
thing as time apart from the nature of the world ; for 
time existed contemporaneously and simultaneously 
with the world. 

On the subject of good and evil, these were his senti- 
ments : that the end was to become like God 3 and 
that virtue was sufficient of herself for happiness, but, 
nevertheless, required the advantages of the body as 
instruments to work with \ such as health, strength, the 
integrity of the senses, and things of that kind. 

Justice is a kind of a law of God, and is of influence 
sufficient to excite men to act justly, in order to avoid 
suffering punishment as malefactors after death. 

Of goods, some have their place in the mind, some 



THINKERS AND THINKING, 127 

in the body, and some are wholly external. As, for 
instance, justice, and prudence, and manly courage, 
and temperance, and qualities of that sort, exist in the 
soul. Beauty, and a good constitution, and health, and 
strength, exist in the body. But friends, and the pros- 
perity of one's country, and wealth, are external goods. 

There are three species of friendship. One kind is 
natural; another is that which arises from companion- 
ship ; and the third is that which is produced by ties 
of hospitality. 

Of justice, there are three species. For there is one 
kind which is conversant with the gods ; a second which 
has reference to men ; and a third which concerns the 
dead. For they who sacrifice according to the laws, 
and who pay due respect to the temples, are manifestly 
pious to the gods. And those who repay what has been 
lent to them, and restore what has been deposited with 
them, act justly as to men. And those who pay due 
respect to the tombs clearly are pious to the dead. 

In the same way there are three kinds of knowledge. 
There is one kind which is practical, a second which 
is productive, a third which is theoretical. 

Of law there are two divisions. For there is a written 
and an unwritten law. As, for instance, for a man to 
come naked into the market-place, or to wear women's 
clothes, are actions which are not prohibited by any 
law; and yet we never do them, because they are for- 
bidden by the unwritten law. 

Happiness is divided into five parts. For one part 
is wisdom in council ; another is a healthy condition 
of the sensations and general health of body ; a third 
is good fortune in one's affairs; a fourth kind is good 



128 THINKERS AND TIIINJaNG. 

reputation among men ; a fifth is abundance of riches 
and of all those things which are useful in life. Now^ 
wisdom in council arises from good instruction, and 
from a person having experience of many things. A 
healthy condition of the sensations depends on the 
limbs of the body j as, for instance, when one sees with 
one's eyes, and hears with one's ears, and smells with 
one's nose, and feels with one's body, just what one 
ought to see, and hear, and smell, and feel. Such a 
condition as this is a healthy condition. And good 
fortune is when a man does rightly and successfully 
what a good and energetic man ought to do. And good 
reputation is when a man is well spoken of. And 
abundance of riches is when a man has such a sufficiency 
of everything to the uses of life that he is able to bene- 
fit his friends, and to discharge all public obligations in 
a splendid and liberal manner. And the man who has 
all these different parts of happiness is a perfectly happy 
man. So that happiness is made up of wisdom in coun- 
cil, a good condition of the sensations and health of 
body, good fortune, reputation, riches. 

Passing from the conclusions of Plato, we come 
naturally to think of him in calling whom the Stagyrite 
the Thracians honored their country. 

" There, in a shrine that cast a dazzhng hght, 
Sat, fixed in thought, the mighty Stagyrite." 

No dramatist is Aristotle. '' No Prodicus, Protago- 
ras, and Hippias are found lounging upon their couches 
amidst groups of admiring pupils. We have no walks 
along the walls of the city, no readings beside the His- 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 129 

sus, no lively symposia giving occasion to high dis- 
courses about love, no Critias recalling the stories he 
had heard in the days of his youth, before he became a 
tyrant, of ancient and glorious republics, — 'above all, 
no Socrates forming a centre to those various groups. 
In their place, however, have we precision, philosoph- 
ical dignity, and richness and variety of dialogue."* 
"Compensation," says Hegel, ''in that we read a 
philosopher who has penetrated into the whole universe 
of things and subjected its scattered wealth to intelli- 
gence ; to him — Vorarbeiter — the greater number of 
the philosophical sciences owe their origin and dis- 
tinction." "A philosopher," affirms Dr. Thomas, 
" who, if considered with respect to the intellect alone, 
may be considered, perhaps, the most remarkable man 
that ever lived." 

Aristotle, son of Nicomachus, physician to Amyntas, 
King of Thrace, was born in Greece, B.C. 384, and, 
although being a physicist in contradistinction to the 
metaphysicist, is to be esteemed as the successor of 
Plato, whose pupil he was. Philosophy with Plato 
lacked, to an extent, universal application ; it was Hel- 
lenic. With Aristotle it was encyclopedic : therefore 
has he come to be recognized and acknowledged as the 
father of many sciences, which, from bud and blossom, 
to-day exist in fruition. To logic indeed, of which he 
was the founder, it is commonly considered that the 
most astute succeeding him have been able to add little 
or nothing. 

Losing his father at the dangerous age of seventeen, 

••■ Maurice. 



130 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



and withal coming into possession of much means, it 
might be inferred that his great desire to pass from 
Stagira to Athens lay not in the desire for mental but 
rather for bodily enjoyment. That this, however, was 
not the case seems to be the almost united conviction 
of his biographers ; albeit hints enough to the contrary 
abound. 

Arriving at Athens, Aristotle was to endure the dis- 
appointment of finding Plato a wanderer in foreign 
lands, and thus for the time was blasted his great hope 
of being admitted to the charms of the Academy. Not 
despondent, however, a course of preliminary studies 
was arranged and most enthusiastically followed, and 
here was commenced the collection of that great library 
of authors by which he shows in his own writings 
familiarity with all work done by his predecessors, and 
by which, indeed, through the many quotations and 
references, is preserved very much that would else have 
been lost. 

As the pupil of Plato, Aristotle first grows into pub- 
lic knowledge : a student so indefatigable is he in the 
labor and zest for information that the master names him 
"Teacher," and, in comparing him with a fellow-pupil 
of note, Xenocrates, speaks of them as a span of horses 
differing in the requirements of management, that 
whereas the latter demands the spur, the former makes 
the bit necessary. 

First a pupil, Aristotle soon passes to the closer com- 
munion of friendship with Plato, and this relation con- 
tinues for the long period of twenty years ; these years, 
as we understand, being spent in the friendly discussion 
of differences in views ; such differences being a natural 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



131 



result of the — in many respects — dissimilar mental na- 
tures of the two masters ; the one, as has been remarked, 
being much of a physicist, the other having little in- 
clination in such direction, — -a misfortune which, in 
debate, allowing most plainly to be seen and felt the 
mastery of Aristotle, has given rise undoubtedly to 
many stories adverse, to say the least of it, to that 
exhibition of deference and gratitude which is ever to 
be shown by the taught to the teacher. "A friend/' 
says Aristotle, ''is one soul in two bodies. A friend 
is one's self. How may one then treat a friend but as 
himself, seeing that he is himself?" Advancing de- 
velopment it was, suggests Lewes, not less than the 
decidedly scientific basis impressed upon his studies, 
which caused Aristotle to take up independent position 
with respect to Plato. One matter is certainly to be 
received and recognized : the logician who inducts from 
a knowledge of physics must always exhibit mastery 
over him who uses alone the means of the metaphysician. 
This power is felt more markedly in the present age 
than ever before, seeing that the advanced education 
of the mass of the people enables them to understand 
and appreciate data and premises. "It is our duty," 
says Aristotle, in his "Ethics," "to slay our own 
flesh and blood where the cause of truth is at stake, 
especially as we are philosophers ; loving both, it is 
our sacred duty to give the preference to truth." 

Quitting Athens upon the death of Plato, we find 
Aristotle removed, in company with Xenocrates, to 
Atarneus, whither he had gone, on invitation of Her- 
mias the ruler, — a former pupil, — to frame a political 
constitution : a purpose defeated by the death of the 



132 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

tyrant, which results in his fleeing to Mitylene, carry- 
ing with him the daughter of Hermias, whom he after- 
wards marries. At Mitylene he receives from Philip 
of Macedori offers for the education of Alexander, an 
office which he accepts and fills with such satisfaction 
as to elicit in after-years from the great conqueror the 
expression ' ' that no less than his own father»did he 
honor Aristotle, for if to the one he owed his life, to 
the other he owed that which made life valuable." As 
a contribution to the cause of science it is said that 
Alexander presented to his teacher the sum of eight 
hundred talents, — nearly one million of dollars, — an 
amount, however, which has undoubtedly been over- 
stated, as, on the showing of Schneider, the whole 
taxes of the empire would not have supplied the 
sum. 

After again teaching in Athens, in the shady walks 
of the peripatos of the Lyceum, gaining thus for his 
students the name of Peripatetics, we find him, on 
the death of Alexander, a fugitive in Euboea, accused 
of disloyalty to the state, of blasphemy, and of pay- 
ing divine honors to mortals. Here, in Chalcis, he 
publishes a defense ; but, mortified and depressed, his 
health, always delicate, gives way, and in a short time 
we find him sinking before his anxieties. He died in 
the sixty-third year of his age, B.C. 322. 

What did Aristotle think of the world in which 
he lived? — of himself? — and of the origin of things? 

Physics comprise the greater portion of the writings 
of the philosopher. Of the beginning — the origin — 
he makes no difficulty. "Matter," said he, "is, 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



T33 



always has been, and will be. Vitalized matter has an 
end, yet is the end but the beginning of a new end ; 
end is form, and the absolute form is spirit." If here 
we rightly comprehend Aristotle, then we are to pro- 
nounce Mr. Darwin an iVristotelian. Man is a devel- 
opment, the highest expression of nature's efforts, 
" Nature, in a strict sense, — the scene of elemental 
working, — represents to us a constant and progressive 
transition of the elementary to the vegetative, and of 
the vegetative to the animal world. The lowest step 
is occupied by the inanimate bodies of nature, which 
are simple products of the elements mingling themselves 
together, and have their entelechy only in the deter- 
minate combinations of those elements, but whose en- 
ergy consists only in striving after a fitting place in the 
universe, and in resting there, so far as they reach it 
unhindered. But now such a mere external entelechy 
is not possessed by the living bodies ; within them 
dwells — as organizing principles — a motion by which 
they attain to actuality, and which, as a preserving 
activity, develops in them towards a perfected organi- 
zation. In a word, they have a soul, for a soul is the 
entelechy of an organic body. In plants we find the 
soul working only as persevering and nourishing energy ; 
the plant has no other function than to nourish itself 
and to propagate its kind. Among animals — where 
we find a progress according to the mode of their re- 
production — the soul appears as sensitive. Animals 
have sense, and are capable of locomotion. Lastly, 
the human soul is, at the same time, nutritive, sensi- 
tive, and cognitive. Man, as the end of all nature, 
embraces in himself the different steps of development 



134 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



in which the life of nature is exhibited. Tlie division 
of the faculties of the soul must therefore be necessarily 
regulated according to the division of living creatures. 
As the nutritive faculty is alone the property of vege- 
tables, and sensation of animals, while to the more 
perfect animals locomotion also belongs, so are these 
three activities also development steps of the human 
soul, the antecedent being the necessary condition of, 
and presupposed in time by, the subsequent ; while the 
soul itself is nothing other than the union of these 
different activities of an organic body in one common 
end, as the entelechy of the organic body. The fourth 
step, thought, or reason, which, added to the three 
others, constitutes the peculiarity of the human soul, 
forms alone an exception from the general law. It is 
not a simple product of the lower faculties of the soul ; 
it does not stand related to them simply as a higher 
stage of development, nor simply as the soul to the 
body, as the end to the instrument, as actuality to pos- 
sibility, as form to matter. But as pure intellectual 
activity, it completes itself without any mediation of a 
bodily organ ; as the reason comes into the body from 
without, so is it separable from the body, and therefore 
has it no inner connection with the bodily functions, 
but is something wholly foreign in nature. True, there 
exists a connection between thought and sensation, 
for while the sensations are outwardly divided, ac- 
cording to the different objects of sense, yet internally 
they meet in one centre, as a common sense. Here 
they become changed into images and representations, 
which again become transmuted into thoughts, and 
so it might seem as if thought were only the result of 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 135 

the sensation, as if intelligence were passively deter- 
mined.'"^ 

In reading this epitome of Aristotelian thought, one 
may not fail to recognize that here begins what has 
been termed modern philosophy, here lie the germs 
of Cabanis, of Maudsley, of Huxley, Herbert Spen- 
cer, and Darwin ; and here is it seen that the moderns 
ring changes only on the suggestions of the ancient 
master. 

Markedly inductive — evolutional — is Aristotle. De- 
nying and discarding the /^/<?^ of Plato, he derives his first 
premise of a thing, or matter, from a number — deemed 
sufficient — of corresponding experiences. ' ' Science, ' ' 
he affirmed, " began when from a great number of 
experiences one general conception might be formed 
which is embracive of all similar cases." If, he says, 
you know that a certain remedy has cured Callias of a 
certain disease, and that the same remedy has produced 
the same effect on Socrates, and on several persons, 
that is experience ; but to know that a certain remedy 
will cure all persons attacked with that disease is art ; 
for experience is the knowledge of individual things, art 
is that of universals. " Experience furnishes the prin- 
ciples of every science. Thus astronomy is grounded 
on observation ; for if we were properly to observe the 
celestial phenomena, we might demonstrate the laws 
which regulate them. The same applies to other sci- 
ences. If we omit nothing that observation can afford 
us respecting phenomena, we could easily furnish the 
demonstration of all that admits of being demonstrated, 

•!■ Schwegler. 



6 THINKERS AND THINKING. 



and illustrate that which is not susceptible of demon- 
stration." 

Aristotle caught the life, and the truth, of nature : 
that is, if the life and truth as known to this century 
are the true expressions. Scientists' of to-day are all 
Aristotelians, and verily would it seem that present in- 
vestigations are alone left to be made through the too 
often faulty premises of the Stagyrite : a view of Aris- 
totle which fully indorses the wide commendation of 
the learned Dr. Thomas as to his being the greatest 
mind of the world. 

With a novel and profound conception of scientific 
method, this philosopher could not effectually carry out 
his own schemes, because, as has been remarked, "his 
age would not provide him sufficiently with experiences 
and generalizations. With Aristotle, experience was 
the basis of all science ; with Plato, reason was the 
basis. Hence the latter, having as his foundation the 
'Idea,' interrogated nature from a single premise. The 
former — after the manner of a physicist — might only 
seek to recognize and prove such Idea as an induction 
arrived at from self-evident facts." 

Premise is, however, a necessity of the inductionist. 
Without a datum, solid and irrefutable, he may not 
justly induce : only may he guess. Thus in false pre- 
mises alone do we find weakness in Aristotle ; possessed 
of the data of the present time, no one would, perhaps, 
have been his peer. That Aristotle himself under- 
stood how, on many points, he must be incomplete, 
no one so well as himself detected ; thus ever was he 
found maintaining that "completeness of knowledge is 
only obtainable through completeness of experience," 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 137 

and if he deduced in syllogisms, the weaknesses of his 
propositions were not always unfelt by him. 

In his relation to theology, Aristotle is thus briefly 
and happily epitomized by Professor Hodge, of Prince- 
ton : — ''He believed the world to be eternal both in 
matter and form. It is, and there is no reason to 
doubt that it always has been and will be. He ad- 
mitted the existence of mind in man, and, therefore, 
assumed that there is an infinite intelligence, of which 
reason in man is a manifestation. But this infinite 
intelligence, which he calls God, was pure intelligence, 
destitute of powder and of will \ neither the creator nor 
the framer of the world ; unconscious, indeed, that the 
world exists, as it is occupied exclusively in thought of 
which it is itself the object. The world and God are 
co-eternal ; and yet, in a certain sense, God is the 
cause of the world. As a magnet acts on matter, or as 
the mere presence of a friend stirs the mind, so God 
unconsciously operates on matter, and awakens its dor- 
mant powers. As the universe is a cosmos, an ordered 
system, and as innumerable organized beings, vege- 
table and animal, exist in the world, Aristotle assumed 
that there are -'forms' inherent in matter, which de- 
termine the nature of all such organizations. This is 
very much what, in modern language, would be called 
'vital force,' vitality, 'vis formativa,' ' Bildungs- 
trieb,' or Agassiz's 'immaterial principle,' which is 
different in every distinct species, and which consti- 
tutes the difference between one species and another. 
The soul is the ' forma' of the man. It is the prin- 
ciple that gives form, motion, and development to the 
body, the entelecheia of it; i.e., that substance which 



138 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

only manifests itself in the body which is formed and 
penetrated by it, and continues energizing in it as the 
principle of life, determining and mastering matter. 
Thus the body is nothing of itself; it is what it is only 
through the soul, the nature and being of which it ex- 
presses ; to which it stands in the relation of a medium 
in which the object, the soul, is realized ; and so it 
cannot be imagined without the body, nor the body 
without it ; one must be produced contemporaneously 
with the other. Of course there can be no immortality 
of the soul. As no plant is immortal ; as the vital 
principle does not exist separately from the plant, so 
the soul has no existence separate from the body. The 
two begin and end together. The really human in 
the soul, that which has come into being, must also 
pass away, the imderstanding even; only the divine 
reason is immortal ; but, as the memory belongs to the 
sensitive soul, and individual thought depends on the 
understanding or passive nous only, all self-conscious- 
ness must cease with death. Thus, then, Aristotle's 
doctrine of the soul shows that his defect, as well as 
that of Plato, and indeed of all antiquity, was his im- 
perfect acquaintance with the idea of personality. His 
God is not a really personal one, or is only an imperfect 
personality. The nous, or reason, allows souls, with 
their bodies, to sink back into nothingness, from which 
they severally issued. It alone exists on, ever the same 
and unalterable ; for it is no other than the divine nous in 
individual existence, the divine intelligence enlighten- 
ing the night of human understanding, and must be 
conceived just as much the prime mover of human dis- 
cursive thought and knowledge, as of his will." 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 139 

In the conclusions of Aristotle are to be found influ- 
ences felt by all succeeding ages ; here is the fountain 
from which drank Epicurus and the Epicureans ; here 
had origin the oft-quoted French saying, "Death is an 
eternal sleep j" here gleaned also Spinoza, ''the soul 
of a man is the breath given the race by God ; being 
itself the life, the essence of God. Man is in God, 
God is in man. Man is a common instrument, an ex- 
pression." Water. is ever destroyed, ever revived; yet. 
water is forever the self-same water. Matter is always 
the same, yet but for a moment of one form. Spirit, 
*' the vital force," is common to all organisms, chang- 
ing with every molecular movement from one to an- 
other, — immortal, yet in every correlation mortal. 
The Ego is a common / a7?i — the expression is 
nothing ; — let water be a fresh creation to every new 
form, and water would overflow space ; let spirit be a 
continuous evolution, and the world would shake to 
pieces from the surcharge. What immensity might 
contain souls forever in process of formation ? 

Most imposing and impressive are the Aristotelian 
deductions ; and by legions are to be counted the fol- 
lowers of the sage. Yet, may we not, — from insuf- 
ficiency of learning, — find ourselves able to refute the 
deductions, we are at least able to satisfy ourselves that 
in the Thracian we may not rest. 

Syllogistic verification was the manner of Aristotle ; 
and where premises are irrefutable, syllogistic reason- 
ing is to be accepted ; but where data are deficient 
or absent, syllogism amounts to nothing. We offer 
an Aristotelian demonstration that a black bird is a 
crow : 



140 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

" All crows are black birds ; 
This bird is black : 
Ergo, this bird is a crow." 

A fallacy of the philosopher in physics, based on 
insufficient knowledge, we may point out. Through 
the vessels of the body, taught the Stagyrite, flow two 
agents, blood and spirit, — the one being the nutritional 
element, the other the ^'life." Air^ or rather the 
universal ether, it was, we recall, which Heraclitus 
pronounced to be the universal life ; in a sense, this 
was what Aristotle accepted as the spirit. Let us see 
here the germ of a truth — a thing true, yet false — 
deceptive, yet, when understood in its fullness, fully 
reliable ; and let us further see how even so great 
a! teacher unwittingly deceives both himself and his 
followers. 

Through the sanguineous vessels of the animal body 
flow, not two fluids, but two expressions of a common 
fluid. These v/e call, and know, as the venous and the 
arterial blood : the first is that condition of the fluid in 
which, having parted with its oxygen, and accepted, in 
return, effete carbonaceous material, it is thus rendered 
incapable of supporting combustion, and consequently 
life ; the second is arterial or oxygenated blood, and is 
that which Aristotle pronounced spirit. The difference 
then between the spirit and the blood, as inferred by 
the sage, is plainly exhibited and demonstrated by the 
observations of modern physiologists. Two features of 
circulation exist : these are known as the systemic and 
the pulmonic. Commencing at the periphery, we trace 
a system of vessels, which, carrying the blood heart- 
ward, is found to contain a fluid, dark, sluggish, and 



THINKERS A AW THINKING. 



141 



lacking, as has been suggested, in all the elements of 
nutrition and combustion. With such an expression of 
the blood alone in the body, life might not be main- 
tained. Commencing with the left auricle of the heart, 
we discover a series of vessels, known as arteries, which 
dissection exhibits as ramifying throughout every por- 
tion of the animal frame, terminating in what are 
known as capillaries, the other extremity of which capil- 
laries designates the commencement of the veins, — the 
system which we have just viewed. In the arteries is 
found a fluid scarlet in color, leaping with pulsatile 
energy, stimulating nutritional life, and supplying the 
demand. Such a difference in this fluid, Aristotle, like 
the modern physiologist, observed ) but, unlike the 
physiologist, he lacked data for comprehending it. 
The true distinction is, however, an easily understood 
matter. Venous blood is blood which has parted with 
the oxygen gas carried by it, and with much of what 
nutritional material it conveyed j in placfe of these, it 
has become impregnated with the effete debris of the 
capillaries, and with a destructive gas, the production 
of that decomposition which is the sequence of animal 
reconstruction. Blood in this state carries, as is seen, 
the elements, not of life, but of death. Venous blood, 
when, in the round of its circulation, it comes to the 
lungs, gives out to the air circulating in these organs 
the carbonic acid gas carried, thus becoming relieved 
of the ofl'ensive material. This same fluid it is, however, 
which in a moment more we are to recognize as arterial 
blood, — as the "spirit^'' of Aristotle. How and where- 
fore the change ? This we are to understand by appre- 
ciating the requirements. Protoplasm is demanded 3 



142 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



for plasma is the nutritional principle. Oxygen is a 
necessity; for this gas is the element of combustion. 

Food, eaten, passes to the stomach ; this organ is 
to be described as a muscular bag, possessing the auto- 
matic power to keep in a state of constant motion 
the pabulum received, and also, through the agency 
of a secreted solvent, to liquefy it, to convert it into a 
bland smooth fluid, known as chyme. Thus digested, 
chyme passes to a second stomach, — the duodenum, as 
it is termed ; here, again subjected to the vito-chemical 
influences of the secretions of the liver and pancreas, it 
is made into chyle, or, as we might more expressively 
term it, into protoplasm, into the element of nutrition, 
into that which is to replace the used-up and thrown- 
out, — that which, in the form of carbonic acid gas, was 
given by the venous blood to the atmosphere. But 
how does this protoplasm, which is in the alimentary 
canal, get into the blood ? If one should take hold of 
a portion of the tube of this canal, — for, as is known 
now to every school-boy, it is a coiled tube, some six 
times the length of the body, — and should drag this 
tube from its place, he would perceive that it had 
myriad attachments in the shape of delicate secondary 
tubes running from it, to centre finally in a common 
tube, which, as the tracing led upward, would be 
found to associate with the venous system of the 
neck. If now, with physiological intent, he should 
incise any of these tubes, he would find the contents 
agreeing closely with those of the alimentary canal, 
thus having irrefutably demonstrated the nature and 
the origin of protoplasm. But whence the second 
element, — the oxygen? If, continuing the examination, 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 143 

the protoplasm which has been poured among and 
mingled v/ith the venous blood be followed, it will be 
seen, — with this blood, — to be dropped immediately 
into the right auricle of the heart ; this cavity, contract- 
ing, throws the fluid into the right ventricle, while in 
turn this sac, resistive of its presence, ejects it into the 
vessels of the lungs. Here occurs the entrance of the 
^'^CBther'^ of Heraclitus, the '■'• spirit^ ^ of Aristotle. The 
carbonic acid gas of the blood now in contact with the 
air, having greater affinity for this substance than for the 
blood with which it is mingled, leaves the one to pass 
to the other ; while the oxygen of the atmosphere, on 
the contrary, having stronger affinity for the elements of 
the blood, separates itself from the nitrogen with which, 
as respirable air, it is in combination, and passes to its 
new office. The blood has now become what is known 
as the arterial fluid, and passing, in the continuous 
round of the circulation, to the left auricle, which we 
found to be the commencement of the arterial distribu- 
tion, it is, through the contraction of this sac and its 
neighboring ventricle, cast with its fresh spij'it to every 
thirsting, hungry capillary of the system. 

Does it here suggest itself that life, after all, is but a 
series of natural phenomena, and that oxygen gas is — 
criticise Aristotle as we may — in truth the spirit of life ? 

Truly is life nothing but a series of phenomena ex- 
plainable in the laws of nature ; and oxygen gas may 
not be denied to be, in a sense, the spirit. But oxygen 
gas is to the animal what it is to the coal lying inert in 
the furnace of the engine. We do not deem the flame 
to be the wonderfal strength brought into existence ; 
for, should we maintain this, we are shown that such 



144 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



strength is powerless without the steam, and that this in 
turn is helpless without agents for its direction. 

Yet may some Quaestor still here find himself in con- 
fusion. "The soul," he might cry, — ''what of the 
soul? What might not Aristotle deduce of the Ego?" 
Spirit and matter, will he have to recognize, are without 
individuality, — as man views the individual. ' ' Body 
and spirit," must he say, "I may not claim; mine is 
not mine ! And, alas ! growing knowledge brings with 
it doubt if even I may call this soul my own !" 

But here might some Cosmos answer, and say, 
"'You are committing, Quaestor, the error of drawing 
deductions from premises not applicable; repeating, — 
as wider outlook must show, — an Aristotelian fallacy. 
Yet arguing from the premises of physical science, and 
the data possessed, you would undeniably and irrefuta- 
bly — as it would seem — be not censurable in doubting 
your soul to be your own, rather than a thing of common 
property, — as are common matter and spirit ; but a re- 
futation is found in a higher premise, namely, in that 
voice of truth which has never yet been belied, and 
which is beyond science and logic, being a possession of 
the unlearned, as well as of the learned ; of the veriest 
heathen, as of the most enlightened Christian, — the 
prepossessions, as philosophically we would describe 
and call such knowledge; instinct, as we speak of such 
wisdom when referring to brutes. ' ' 

All animals, wherever they are, and whatever they 
may be, are born with certain instincts, which are 
necessities of existence ; instincts so highly developed 
in directions which knowledge may not strengthen, as 
to be all-sufficient for the direction of life. As an 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



145 



illustration, view the bird avoiding the poisoned berry, 
albeit it is the brightest and the most odorous ; the 
duck, unfledged and scarcely freed from its shell, seek- 
ing that water so carefully avoided by the chicken 
hatched under the same down ; the poisoned dog, 
passing to the antidote with an instinct more reliable 
to save than the skill of the pharmaceutist. Such in- 
stinct it is which teaches man of his soul, and advises 
every human tongue to utter prayer in a time of trouble. 
Who but asks for succor in his need ? and who to crave 
such help needs teaching ? The infant in its first cry 
tells its dependence ; the old man with his last gasp 
begs a support and assistance which he finds not in 
himself. Wherefore this instinct ? wherefore this unity 
in dependence ? It differs not from that which directs 
the brute and the bird ; and who but recognizes that it 
is here truth? As, then, it does not here deceive, how 
can it be doubted by that knowledge which it so in- 
finitely transcends? 

Qu^STOR. — You open to me escape from doubt. 
Instinct I must see to be a high and true guide ; and 
yet I may not but as well recognize that certain of the 
instincts (let us example the animal passions of man) 
require much the guidance of reason, that they may not 
run entirely away with, and destroy, the possessor. 

Cosmos. — You say indeed right, and in this it is seen 
that nature pays deference to the soul, and acknowl- 
edges its residence in the human body, and infers it to 
have more or less influence in the management. Truly 
were it sad should this not be the case, for herein is 
the single, simple difference between man and the brute : 
the man possesses a double guide, — the necessity of his 



146 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

complicated relations ; the brute, having but a single 
line of associations, finds in the one his sufficiency. 
Overlook not that it is of instinct alone we speak. 
Does the brute debase itself, or does the bird seek to 
use its wings in the water, the fish to fly, or the seal 
to run a race ? Make not further mistake in consider- 
ing what might be termed confused instinct ; instinct 
modified by education. The brute knoweth the laws of 
its nature ; the natural man moves alone that lid of his 
eye which directs his vision and his thoughts upward. 

Qu^STOR. — I must yet contend that instinct seems 
not the highest instruction, for I may not but perceive 
its leadings to be various. 

Cosmos. — Various, but always right. 

QuiESTOR. — It seems the instinct of the savage to be 
a cannibal : is this to be esteemed true guidance ? 

Cosmos. — Quite as true as that which leads the car- 
nivora to flesh. Who of us but shall shudder at the 
fate of the lamb borne in the talons of the vulture? 
or who but finds his eyes fill with pitying tears as he 
watches the frightened crouching rabbit which seeks 
to drag its form through the bars caging a hungry 
lion ? It seems horrible ; it looks merciless. Yet can 
it only be so to one who has decided that in himself is 
greater fullness of conception than lies in that which 
evolves the higher from the lower. Death is not 
death, — death is life; and the lamb, converted into a 
bird, soars where the monarch of the forest might not 
venture. Of the pang of the change — no trace remains. 
In lightning, the savage sees but the wrath of his God ; 
in electricity, learning recognizes a God's good gift 
purifying a poisoned atmosphere to man's salvation. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



147 



QUiESTOR. — What is, then, is right. 

Cosmos. — So I accept and most religiously believe. 
The true experience is the common experience ; and 
what the generations find — and have found — is the light 
in which men do best to walk. 

QUiESTOR. — But we advance. 

Cosmos. — Yes. This is the wonderful law of evolu- 
tion, — the law of growing ; a law which shall compel 
some future generation to look back at this present one 
as gropers in darkness, pitying not less us than in our turn 
have we pity for him who eats the flesh of his brother. 

Qu^STOR. — Ah, we are specks in immensity. 

Cosmos. — Truly, truly; and we may set up no special 
law for ourselves. Man's highest attainment lies in 
appreciating aud conforming to the common law. 

QUiESTOR. — I feel like one thrust out into a cold, 
bleak space. 

Cosmos. — That is to say, that, because you surmise 
you cannot be the central something of nature's care, 
you would creep away, feeling yourself deserted, — a 
helpless prey to the vulture, — a toothsome morsel to 
the hungry lion. 

QUiESTOR. — Something very like this is my feeling. 

Cosmos. — Let us then hasten forward; for in this 
same law of evolution, and in this law alone, may we 
find consolation. 

After Aristotle, Christ, — not in direct descent, but in 
influence on the world, accepted by that intelligence 
which is law, by that experience and judgment in which 
alone we safely walk. 

The scholar, passing in review the thinkers and 



148 r II INKERS AND THINKING. 

thinking which precede Christ, finds the universal 
search to be after a primal, — the "One" (shall we say?) 
of Pythagoras, in which exist all numbers; the ''Uni- 
versal" of Heraclitus; the "^ther" of Anaximenes ; 
the ''Moisture" of Thales; the "Idea" of Plato. In 
the universal consciousness of mankind existed, as to- 
day exists, the conviction, the "Instinct," of an under- 
lying foundational something; of a "Noumenon;" of 
that of which the phenomena of the world are the 
expressions. To comprehend and to ungarb this 
noumenon, to expose and to bring to sight this some- 
thing, have men ever thought and toiled, advanced and 
fallen back; each worker, however, drawing the veil 
somewhat more from before the light, giving to the 
pathway of his fellows increase of brightness. 

Man, teaches Christ, is a phenomenon, — an expression 
of the noumenon. This, in principle, taught also other 
philosophers ; but, teaches Christ, the expression is the 
state of sonship. The noumenon is God ; God is the 
Father, Creator, and equally the Preserver. 

Imprimis, the doctrine taught by Christ meets fully 
the wants of man. This is so promptly responded to by 
the common experience, that the doctrine gathers force 
with every day, and has the response of an almost 
universal acceptation. 

Our review of the world's thoughts began with the 
Ionic philosopher Thales. This was before Christ ^t^^) 
years. Ancient philosophy we ended with Aristotle, 
before Christ 384 years. This includes a period of just 
252 years. This period we will enlarge by referring, 
for a second time, to the thinkers intervening between 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



149 



Aristotle and Christ. Concerning these periods we 
have already somewhat informed ourselves. We have 
witnessed absence of fixedness, universal unrest, com- 
mon and persistent doubt, and deductions confused and 
dispelled by growing light. 

In the immediately post-Aristotelian period we find 
the expression of exhaustion, — the exhaustion of the 
energy of investigation. Men, even in the immediate 
time of the philosopher, outgrew his conclusions, yet 
felt themselves powerless for loftier or truer flight. 
Thus baffled and confused, indifference grew apace, 
and soon the age rested in the void of skepticism, — or, 
to speak more philosophically, in the conclusions of 
Pyrrhonism. 

Pyrrho, a native of Elis, born B.C. 380, a cotempo-. 
rary of Aristotle, — cotemporaneous certainly with the 
immediate influences of his writings, — a student of the 
philosophy of Democritus, by which he had been led 
to doubt, is represented as a man full himself of knowl- 
edge, of guilelessness, and of gentleness. Standing in 
the period of philosophical influence, he might not 
better be expressed than in the language of Hume. 
" The writings of the authors, being full and solid, 
tempt and carry me which way almost they will. He 
that I am reading seems always to have the most force ; 
and I find that every one in turn has reason, though 
they contradict one another." In such a frame' of 
mind Pyrrho may justly be imagined to have been 
when the excitement of the occasion and an indifference 
to the ordinary pursuits of life prompted him to join 
the expedition of Alexander in the invasion of India. 
And here, away in a strange land, surrounded by new 



15° 



ril INKERS AND THINKING. 



thoughts and new influences, finding faith, fixedness, 
and a happy contentment in philosophy aside from 
that of Greece, he might not longer believe in a pecu- 
liar truthfulness in his own, but the rather perceive 
and accept of a ^'- tmivei-sal,''^ which existed apart from 
creeds and from professions. Timon the Greek poet, 
Epicurus, and Zeno represent phases of Pyrrhonism ; 
these, with their followers, being skeptics. 

Philosophy, suggested Pyrrho, may be of consequence 
to mankind only as it is able to add to his happiness in 
living. Whatever, therefore, shall increase such happi- 
ness is to be accepted as philosophy. But neither in 
our senses nor in learning can exist true philosophy, 
for in neither of these may we find either verification 
of truth or refutation of falsehood. All objective 
knowledge is impossible : therefore, philosophy con- 
sists in having no opinion either of noumenon or of 
phenomenon, and in withholding, on every occasion and 
on every matter, positive assertion. Let your language 
be, "// may be so ;'^ '^Perhaps ;'[ ^'Such as it is possi- 
ble ;^ ' ' '/ assert nothing, not even that I assert nothing. ' ' 
In such negation the skeptics thought to attain to in- 
difference, this being with them a synonym of happi- 
ness. Death, says the skeptic, is nothing different 
from life ; health and sickness are the same : ergo, it 
is the same to be sick as to be well, to be dead as to be 
alive. He, therefore, who attains to skepticism, lives 
ever in tranquillity and happiness, for, recognizing that 
what man has inferred amounts to nothing, and judging 
that nothing of truer wisdom is to come of the future, 
it is for him to rest in peace and in quiet, making the 
best of that which he finds surrounding him. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



151 



In no writer do we find a more satisfactory epitome 
of skepticism than in Sextiis Empiricus : 

''There is no criterion of truth. Plato had pro- 
pounded his ' ideal ' theory. Aristotle refuted it by 
proving it to be purely subjective. But then the 
theory of demonstration, which Aristotle placed in 
its stead, wa,s not that equally subjective? What was 
this boasted logic but the systematic arrangement of 
ideas obtained originally through sense? According 
to Aristotle, knowledge could only be a knowledge of 
phenomena; although he too wished to make out a 
science of causes. And what are phenomena ? Pheno- 
mena are the appearances of things. But where exists 
the criterion of the truth of these appearances ? How 
are we to ascertain the exactitude of the accordance of 
these appearances with the things of which they are 
appearances? We know full well that things appear 
to us differently at different times j appear differently 
to different individuals ; appear differently to different 
animals. Are any of these appearances true? if so, 
which are? and how do we know which are true? 
Moreover, reflect on this : we have five senses, each of 
which reveals to us a different quality in the object : 
thus, an apple is presented to us ; we see it, smell it, 
feel it, taste it, hear it bitten; and the sight, smell, 
taste, feeling, and sound, are five difl"erent appear- 
ances, — five different appearances under which we per- 
ceive the thing ; if we had three senses more, the 
thing would have three qualities more, it would pre- 
sent three more appearances; if we had three senses 
less, the thing would have three qualities less. Are 
these qualities wholly and entirely dependent on our 



152 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



senses, or do they really appertain to the thing? and 
do they all appertain to it, or only some of them? 
The differences of the impressions made on different 
people seem to prove that the qualities of things are 
dependent on the senses : these differences at any rate 
show that things do not present one miiform series of 
appearances. All we can say with truth is, that things 
appear to us in such and such manner. That we have 
sensation is true ; but we cannot say that our sensations 
are true images of the things ; that the apple we have 
is brilliant, round, odorous, and sweet, may be very 
true, if we mean that it appears such to our senses; 
but to keener or duller vision, scent, tact, and taste, it 
may be dull, rugged, offensive, and insipid."* 

'^ Amidst this confusion of sensuous impressions, 
philosophers pretend to distinguish the true from the 
false : they assert that reason is the criterion ; reason 
distinguishes. Plato and Aristotle are herein agreed. 
Very well, reply the skeptics, reason is your criterion. 
But what proof have you that this criterion itself dis- 
tinguishes truly ? You must not return to sense ; that 
has already been given up ; you must rely upon reason ; 
and we ask you what proof have you that your reason 
never errs ? What proof have you that it is ever cor- 
rect ? A criterion is wanted for your criterion ; and so 
on ad infinitum y 

Associated with the school of Pyrrho, to the extent 
of remaining skeptics, arose a sect calling themselves, 
in contradistinction to the old, the New Academicians. 
This school, established by Arcesilaus, a pupil of Aris- 

* Lewes: History of Philosophy. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



15; 



totle, possessed at least one positive over the universal 
negation of the Pyrrhonists, inasmuch as they held to 
the declaration that "all things are incomprehensible." 
Carneades, one prominent in this school, being thought 
a fit ambassador to represent Athens at Rome, so at- 
tracted the inhabitants of the Stoic city as constantly 
to be surrounded by crowds fascinated with his subtlety 
and eloquence. Before Galba, before Cato the Censor, 
"he harangued with marvelous unction in praise of 
justice j and the hard brow of the grim Stoic softened, 
an approving smile played over those thin firm lips. 
But the next day the brilliant orator undertook to ex- 
hibit the uncertainty of all human knowledge ; and, as 
a proof, he refuted all the arguments with which the 
day before he had supported justice. He spoke against 
justice as convincingly as he had spoken for it. The 
brow of Cato darkened again, and, with a keen instinct 
of the dangers of such ingenuity operating upon the 
Roman youth, he persuaded the Senate to send back 
the philosopher to his country."* 

All things;, affirmed Arcesilaus, are incomprehensi- 
ble. On the contrary, declared the Stoics, there is an 
assent of the mind which recognizes the true and re- 
jects the false, — the common-sense perceptions of things. 
' ' Wherein, then, ' ' queries Arcesilaus, " is the difference 
between the assent of a wise man and the assent of a 
madman?" 

Well put, may we think, and doubt may arise as 
to the acceptance of that Philosopher's Stone which 
affirms "the true experience to be in the common 

* Thirlwal]. 
II 



154 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

experience. "* But Arcesilaus overlooked the important 
fact that individual experience is not the common ex- 
perience — though of it. In a dry season, he who gathers 
hay prays for continuance of the dryness ; he, on the 
contrary, who mows not, craves rain : in the need of 
neither lies the common want, for what is an expres- 
sion of good to the one is deemed of evil by the other. 
Law, to the infringer, is an avenger, inasmuch as it 
circumvents and baffles ill designs ; to the good man, 
— living in peace and in the desire of peace, — it is the 
segis of his liberty and well-being. The law of the 
common experience is the law of a universal recogni- 
tion of a good ; it is a thing of growth, although its 
announcement may be of a speed that attends the 
planting of an acorn which yet only after many years 
comes to be seen as the oak-tree. 

The question of the post-Aristotelian period seemed 
to resolve itself into the "truthfulness of man's knowl- 
edge," Zeno and his followers contending, as has 
been suggested, for the existence of a criterion for such 
knowledge, the New Academicians denying that such 
a criterion might exist. In what, asked the new school, 
may a criterion exist? It cannot reside in reason, for 
reason is but the resultant of perception and concep- 
tion ; effect may not be deemed correspondent with, 
and explanative of, cause, for effects come to be recog- 
nized simply as illustrations made by the senses, and 
'these are influenced, not by fixed laws, but by indi- 
vidual peculiarities. In the noise of thunder and in 



-■■ Referring to "The Philosopher's Stone" in the author's "Odd 
Hours of a Pliysician." 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



155 



the glare of the lightning does the man of full natural 
senses perceive the existence of electrical disturbances; 
he who is deficient in the sense of hearing knows the 
noumenon alone in the glare ; he who is sightless per- 
ceives only the sound. A seventh sense — did man 
possess it — might readily be conceived as compelling 
some entirely different impression. Reason and sense, 
then, are in themselves capable of explaining nothing : 
consequently man, possessing alone such criterion, knows 
nothing, and is, from the very nature of his construc- 
tion, incapable of knowing anything. Things are to 
us as our senses recognize them, and such percep- 
tions are, perhaps, enough for man's wants; but, 
what things are in reality, man has no means of com- 
prehending. '■ 

Here, in few phrases, are to be comprehended the 
doctrines of the New Academy. Such a school might 
amount to nothing; for from nothing may not some- 
thing come. Man might not, however, rest ; for al- 
though every ground upon which, for the moment, 
he had placed the foundation of his hopes and of his 
faith, had in time, quagmire-like, sunk under him, 
yet went there out the common anticipation of a some- 
thing more solid and fast yet to be found. It might 
but be, however, that under the influence of such well- 
founded skepticism Greek philosophy should die. Man 
followed, or thought he followed, a false light, and in 
loathing turned from that which excited now but his 
contempt : hence do we come to understand the dim 
obscurity into which, for a thousand years, fell the 
writings of even an Aristotle : indeed, even might these 
years be called two thousand, for in modern objectivism 



156 HUNKERS AND THINKING. 

— materialism — is alone to be found — in truth — the 
resurrection of the Stagyrite. 

Grecian philosophy dead, we are to find the thinking 
world alone in casting widely for the thinkers. From 
Athens, observation may lead us to Alexandria : here 
flourished, coexistent with the rise of Christianity, a 
number of world-impressing thinkers, who, discarding 
philosophy in an outlook for a something more satis- 
factory, yet termed themselves, or were termed, Neo- 
platonists. Among the eminent and' yet remembered 
of this school may be mentioned Philo, Plotinus, 
Porphyry, and Proclus. 

To think otherwise than empirically, is, perhaps, 
impossible ; for howsoever new any one thing or idea 
may seem, yet scrutiny seldoi-ft shall fail to exhibit the 
new impression as an evolution ; so the Neo-platonists 
are seen to have origin — unconscious origin, may it be 
termed — in Plato and in Aristotle. There is, said the 
Neo-platonist, a world ; the world is an emanation. 
Human souls are an emanation, all that is felt and seen 
and known are emanations, — emanations from that 
which is the sum of the all, — the abstract Ego : in this 
All are all things, to this All go all things.* 

The Neo-platonists were what is to be termed mystics. 
Mysticism is happily defined by Flemingf ''as that 
which despairs of the regular progress of science; it 
believes that we may attain directly, without the aid 
of the senses or reason, and by an immediate intuition, 
the real and absolute principle of all truth, God. It 
finds God either in nature, and hence a physical and 

* Compare with Spinozism, f See Vocabulary of Philosophy. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 157 

naturalistic mysticism ; or in the soul, and hence a 
moral and metaphysical mysticism. It has also its his- 
torical views, and in history it considers especially that 
which represents mysticism in full and under its most 
regular form, — that is, religions ; and it is not to the 
letter of religions, but to their spirit, that it clings." 

Philo, a Jew who lived in Alexandria at the time of the 
birth of Christ, may be advanced as the type of the Neo- 
platonists proper ; Proclus, rather as the pure Alexan- 
drian, — the man of faith, — the undoubting pantheist. 

Philo, Oriental in his nature, Greek in his education, 
might not but find the bent of his inclination influ- 
enced to great extent by the thoughts of the Athenians 
which he had come to know. Upon what is called 
reason he recognized he might not depend; for Car- 
neades had shown not only Cato and Rome, but Alex- 
andria also, that reason was not truth. With Plato, he 
felt that a pre-existent ideal must exist, but yet might 
not, with Socrates, grasp the separability of objective 
existence. "God," said Philo, ''is ineffable, is in- 
comprehensible : his existence may be known ; his 
nature can never be known. To know that God exists 
is in itself the knowledge of his being one, perfect, 
simple, and without attribute. This knowledge is 
implied in the simple knowledge of his existence : he 
cannot be otherwise if he exist at all. But to know 
this is not to know in what consists his perfection. We 
cannot penetrate with our glance the mystery of his 
essence. We can only believe."* 

* "About the beginning of the Christian era, a Jew was teaching in 
Alexandria, who, while he retained the profoundest reverence for the 
divine oracles of his country, acknowledged the Indian gynmosopliist, 



1^8 r II INKERS AND THINKING. 

God being thus, in himself, according to Philo, in- 
comprehensible, it becomes necessary, that man may 

the Greek philosopher, the Egyptian symbohzer, as having received 
wisdom from the Source of Wisdom, as having been led, so far as 
they were led, out of the pursuit of visible and sensible things, by one 
who is seeking to bring man's spirit into communion with himself. 
. . . He speaks of the lover and pursuer of wisdom as the spiritual 
or divine man, who has quitted the downward path and is seeking 
his proper object. But the seeker of wisdom is also the seeker of 
God. Wisdom is not an aggregate of conclusions ; it is not the 
human soul, it is not a somethmg diffused through all things : it is the 
I Am who spoke to Moses in the bush,— the INSTRUCTOR and IN- 
SPIRER of all the prophets, — He who gave the law on Sinai. Philo 
confessed, as any Jew must, an Absolute Being; one dwelling in 
hght which no man hath seen or can see. How such a Being should 
converse with man, how there could be sympathy between him and 
a creature, was the wonder of the Hebrew psalmist and prophet. But 
he beheved while he wondered. Philo saw that such an intercourse 
was as much implied in all the Hebrew records, as much implied in 
the nature of God himself, as his self-existence and self-concentration. 
The two truths could not be reconciled in a theory. A Divine Word, 
a Logos, speaking to the mind and spirit which was opened to hear 
the voice, Philo thought, the reconciliation. Such a speaker he 
traced in all the most obvious and minute expressions of the divine 
book, in all the steps of the Hebrew philosophy. It is this principle 
worked out through all the Scripture narratives, which constitutes the 
peculiarity of Philo's writings. This is his philosophy or theosophy. 
On this ground he can contemplate with interest the Brahminical 
aspirations after absorption in the Divine essence ; the struggles of 
men to know the divine, the beautiful, the good; their eagerness to 
escape from sensual defilements and *the prison-house of the body ; 
their sense of moral obligations ; their mythological or natural alle- 
gories. The path of sensuality and darkness is that which most men 
tread ; a few have been led along the upward path ; a few in all coun- 
tries and in all generations have been wisdom-seekers, or seekers of 
God; they have been so because the divine word or wisdom has 
looked upon them, choosing them for the knowledge and service of 
himself" — Maurices Reading of Philo. See his Moral and Meta- 
physical Pliilusophy. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



159 



know him, that an interpreter exist. This interpreter 
lies in the ^^word." This "word" expressing the thought 
of God, and existing in the double signification of 
idea (the '' ideal" of Plato), and, as expressed by Lewes, 
of "thought," becomes the world. Thus, with Philo, 
is there first, God, — the God, God in the ideal, — the 
Son ; then the son of the son, the result of the ideal, 
— the world. 

Philo, understood, seems to be another John the 
Baptist crying in the wilderness. 

Plotinus and Proclus differ from Philo alone in being 
men of simpler natures, possessing more of faith and 
less of speculative habit: this would seem to be a 
common opinion. 

"Plotinus," says Hallam, "had he come a century 
later, would, instead of a heathen philosopher, have 
been one of the first names among the saints of the 
church." That, however, either this sage or Proclus 
is to be esteemed of less learning than Philo is not to 
be admitted. Longinus esteemed Plotinus over all the 
philosophers of his day; while Proclus seemed to have 
possessed himself of that knowledge which allowed 
him to succeed Syrianus as the head of the Neo- 
platonists. "All philosophical rays," says M. Cousin, 
"which emanated from Pythagoi-as, from Plato, and 
from Aristotle, found concentration in Proclus. But 
both Plotinus and Proclus were eminently religious ; 
inborn in them was a faith in a common father and in a 
common religion. ^ Faith,' says Proclus, ' is above all 
science.' Mercury, the messenger of Jove, reveals to 
us Jove's paternal will, and thus teaches us science, 
and, as the author of all investigation, transmits to us, 



l6o TIIIXKERS AND TinNKhXG. 

his disciples, the genius of invention. The science 
which descends into the soul from above is more per- 
fect than any science obtained by investigation ; that 
which is excited in us by other men is far less perfect. 
Invention is the energy of the soul. The science 
which descends from above fills the soul with the in- 
fluence of higher causes. The gods announce it to us 
by their presence and by illuminations, and discover 
to us the order of the universe. The mind, might 
Proclus have said, is the Claude Lorrain glass in which 
is to be seen the world." 

A likeness between Proclus and Socrates is often- 
times noticed : the difference, however, is happily pre- 
sented in the rendition of the Delphian inscription, 
'^ Know thyself." '' Socrates interpreted this inscrip- 
tion as an exhortation to psychological and ethical study. 
He looked inward, and there discovered certain truths 
which skepticism could not darken; and he discoursed 
on justice and on injustice, on things holy and on 
things unholy. Know thyself, says Proclus, that you 
may know the essence from whose source you are de- 
rived. Know the divinity that is within you, that you 
may know the divine one of which your soul is but a 
ray. Know your own mind, and you will have the 
key to all knowledge. ' ' 

The character of the stand-point of Plotinus, Pro- 
clus, and their followers is recognized in their rela- 
tion to Platonism, mysticism, and pantheism. With 
Plato they acknowledged a science of universals : no 
one thing was, in itself, persistent ; the sensible world 
was but an expression of the ideal, and this, in turn, 
was but an expression, or mode of existence, of God. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. i6i 

In their character of mystics, however, do we find 
the most to attract and interest us in the Alexandrian 
school, science falling into the arms of faith. The 
mystics affirmed the identity of subject and object : to 
know a thing, they said, one must be of that thing. 
Man may know of objects, therefore is he himself ob- 
jective ; he may know of the ideal, therefore is he a 
part of the ideal. If, said Plotinus, knowledge is the 
same as the thing known, the finite as finite can never 
know the infinite, because it can never be the infinite. 
To attempt, therefore, to know the infinite by reason, is 
futile: it can only be known in immediate presence. 
Soul is of the body, though not the body; the infinite 
resides in the finite. In ecstasy the infinite may divest 
itself of its personality, and thus mingle with and know 
the infinite in its personality as well as in its extension. 
In ecstasy the soul contemplates existence, and per- 
ceives itself to be of that which it contemplates : to be 
able then to know God, and to know ourselves of God, 
is to take'advantage of transitory glimpses, to be caught 
alone in the state of ecstasy. Ecstasy comes of music, 
of beauty, of prayer, and of meditation. "Everything 
which purifies the soul and makes it resemble its primal 
simplicity is capable of conducting it to ecstasy. 
Some souls are ravished with beauty, and these belong 
to the muses ; others are ravished with unity and pro- 
portion, and these are philosophers; others are more 
struck with moral perfection, and these are the pious 
and ardent souls who live only in religion." 

The doctrine of ecstasy is seen not to have confined 
itself to the direct period of the Neo-platonists ; it has 
lived to be, in a modified sense, a doctrine of to-day ; 



1 62 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

it has proved its truthfulness in an acceptaticn by the 
indorsement of the common experience, for even the 
present intelligence recognizes not less than did the 
Alexandrians that the abnegation of the sensual and 
the cultivation of the sensuous lead out of the finite 
towards the infinite. 

But Neo-platonism had origin almost coincident with 
the birth of Christ : as developed the new teachers, so 
developed Christianity ; the law of the lower was to 
come in combat with the doctrines of the higher. To- 
day the student of ancient lore knows alone of Philo 
and of Plotinus ; but to-day all civilization knows of 
and accepts Christ. Christ and Christianity are, then, 
of truer import to the wants of mankind than was all 
which had preceded. From Thales to Neo-platonism 
was a period of six hundred years, and in this interim we 
have seen in the continuous changes the universal unrest 
attendant on the absence of that which man might 
recognize as truth suited to his requirements. He ac- 
cepted, for the time, each truer and higher develop- 
ment as it came, but in none did he find the needs of 
his life supf)lied ; he saw, and felt, and lived in the 
good, as he received it, yet craved ever more satisfying 
good ; the seed as yet given developed not into that fruit 
which might satisfy fully the hunger felt. From Christ 
are all the generations of the succeeding centuries : 
what a wonderful philosophy, that man, after eighteen 
hundred years, should continue to find every require- 
ment, both of body and of soul, supplied, and that the 
craving for higher truth has passed from himj In the 
true experience of an acceptance by the common ex- 
perience, Christ and Christianity may only be accepted 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



163 



as the brightest light shining to-day on earth for the 
guidance of man ; and he who walks not in this light is 
a foc^l, by the provings of all that has gone before. 
We will not call Christianity religion, as that term is 
ordinarily employed. AVe have just here nothing to 
do with the doctrines but as a system for man's guid- 
ance. 

The world to-day is thinking; all mankind are as 
seeds of thought ; but every seed finds its pabulum in 
the aphorisms of Christ : in what ether may man soar 
higher, in what soil may he delve deeper, in what 
expanse find greater latitude? In Christ do the learned 
rest j in him the man of simple faith finds refuge ; here 
is the light of to-day, a light which has eclipsed 
all other lights ; a light increasing year by year and 
age by age, as men grow into perception of its bright- 
ness. 

What is this wonderful philosophy ? It is a philos- 
ophy which deals with the every-day and with the all- 
time wants of man, whether these be natural, moral, or 
spiritual. Speculation it exj^lains in the widest sense, 
yet spares details, that thus forever may be reserved to 
man interest in inquiry* 

And here, with true ability to comprehend, we come 
back to materialism, to modern positivism. 

To say, however, modern positivism, is a misnomer. 
Positive thought is certainly traceable to Ionic philos- 
ophy, — traceable, may it be said with wider truth, to 
man in his origin ; for to all men has come the ques- 
tion of the meaning of things, and in inquiring into 
such meaning has man found never -cloying enter- 
tainment. 



1 64 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

Let us, however, that we may understand modern 
thought, — with which, unfortunately, as the result of 
man's ignorance, so much skepticism has come to be 
interwoven, — begin a very limited review with the 
thirteenth century. 

Standing here prominently forth, himself a barrier 
to the common tide, arose Roger Bacon, "a man 
strangely compounded of almost prophetic gleams of 
the future course of science and the best principles of 
an inductive philosophy," and yet possessed, as Hal- 
lam terms it, "with more than usual credulity in the 
superstitions of his time." No, not possessed with cre- 
dulity was this great thinker r possessed rather of 
larger acumen than many who have succeeded him, he 
recognized much of the oneness of truth as it was to be 
seen in its many guises, and even more did he recognize 
of the fallibility of human knowledge. "What man 
knows," exclaims this sage, " is little and worthless in 
respect to that which he may believe without knowing, 
and still less in respect of that which he does not 
know. Mad is he who thinks much of his wisdom ; 
maddest he who exhibits it as something marvelous." 

Standing forth in opi^osition to that scholasticism to 
which reference has been made, Roger Bacon affirmed 
the weakness of the age — as reference was had to ad- 
vance in knowledge — to lie in four obstructions. " ist, 
the influence of fragile and unworthy authority; 2d, 
custom ; 3d, the imperfection of the undisciplined 
senses ; 4th, the concealment of our ignorance by 
ostentation of our seeming wisdom." "All wisdom," 
he affirmed, "is to be found in the Scriptures; but it 
\'^ pJdlosophy alone that may bring forth this truth." 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 165 

A science, affirmed this savant, which shall be a 
prima philosophia must consist of and embrace all the 
laws of nature which are fixed and universal : questions 
in physics are not to be solved by reason, but in the 
law of the thing discussed. In every science we must 
follow the best method; and that is to study each part 
in its due order, placing that first which is properly at 
the commencement, the easy before the difficult, the 
general before the particular, the simple before the com- 
plex. And the exposition must be demonstration. This 
is impossible without experiment. We have three means 
of knowledge, — authority, reasoning, and experiment. 
Authority has no value unless its reason be shown ; it 
does not teach, it only calls for assent. In reasoning we 
commonly distinguish a sophism from a demonstration by 
verifying the conclusion through experiment. Experi- 
mental science is the mistress of the speculative sciences, 
and has three great prerogatives. First, she tests and 
verifies the conclusions of other sciences ; secondly, she 
discovers, in the notions which other sciences deal with, 
magnificent results to which these sciences are incom- 
petent ; thirdly, she investigates the secrets of nature 
by her own powers. 

Bacon revives the treasures of Aristotle : the ideal 
invited him only through the 7'eaL He recognized the 
objective, and felt that through this went the pathway 
leading to the subjective.* Grammar and mathematics 

* " If there are beings," said Aristotle, "who hve in the depths of 
the earth, in dweUings adorned with sculpture and paintings, with 
everything that we call beautiful, and could these beings, never hav- 
ing heard of the existence of the gods, rise through the open fissures 
of the land, and could they gaze upon the sun giving forth light and 



1 66 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

went farther with him than did texts and sentences. 
His nature sought demonstration, and his learning was 
sufficient to satisfy him that nothing demanded special 
revelation, for faith was inimical to demonstration ; and 
so greatly esteemed was this erudition that through it 
came to be applied to him the title of the ''Admirable 
Doctor." 

If evolution be in any way allied with inspiration, 
surely might we deem this man selected as an instru- 
ment. Living in an age when the Pope and the church 
were the accepted infallible guides, himself a mendicant 
Franciscan friar, denied not only the right to express in- 
dependent opinions, but even more, the right to hold 
any, surrounded by ignorant and intolerant bigots 
ever on the watch for heresy, it is not strange that we 
find his writings condemned by his brother churchmen 
and himself immured ten weary years in the confine- 
ment of a prison, and not strange that his immediate 
influence upon his age should be so little comprehended 
by the periods intervening between the thirteenth and 
eighteenth centuries, his works preserved in manu- 
script finding no publisher until 1773, and not, indeed, 
to any extent until even so short a time as twenty-fivi 
years back. 

But, if Bacon did not in himself much for the ui> 
springing of science and the relieving of the humar, 
mind from the shackles of too cumbrous traditions, 
he struck heavily the wedge that now so widely sepa- 

life, upon the moon casting over earth streams of silvery mellowness 
upon the stars holding the endless course marked out for them fron 
the beginning, surely they would exclaim, 'There are gods, am 
these great things are the works of their hands.' " 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 167 

rates bigotry from true religion ; he has in his way 
allied physics with theology, the things made with the 
maker. 

"Bacon," says one of his biographers,'^ "impresses 
me as being above all men surprised, perhaps over- 
whelmed, with the mysteries of nature. To dispose of 
them under heads, as a learned Dominican would have 
done, could not satisfy him. There was a teeming in- 
exhaustible life in nature and natural things, a product- 
ive power, which he must come directly in contact 
with, which he could not be content to learn at second 
hand from Aristotle or from any one else." 

In Bacon do we also see well demonstrated that con- 
flict with prejudices which seems to come to all pioneers. 
That which to-day is the commendation of experimenters 
brought to Bacon little but opprobrium : that a man 
should expend two thousand pounds — considering the 
value of money in his day — in experiments in the labora- 
tory, seemed to his fellows incredible, unless with an 
object not allied with moral or proper things. "What 
could it be for? Most astonishing processes of nature 
he spoke of, — processes which laughed the doings of the 
ordinary conjurer to scorn. But he spoke not only of 
processes in nature. He declared and proved that, 
having a knowledge of these, he could exercise the 
strangest power over nature. He seemed not to be able 
to measure the range of human power. He told of 
arts which might be tremendous to mankind if there 
was not the greatest care and self-restraint in the use of 
them. Who could tell that he had these ? Was he not 

-• Maurice. 



l68 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

wandering into a new, untried region, the reports of 
which, if they might be trusted, showed that it was 
full of perils to the first explorer and to those who 
should venture to follow in his footsteps, — perhaps to 
the vast majority who could not follow him at all? 
What if he said he hated the magicians? Does not 
every one hate the rival whom he hopes to supersede ? 
Might not this be a much more alarming kind of magic 
than any which had y^t been practiced,— all the more 
dangerous because it assumed another name and put 
on the air of a religious investigation ?" 

Philosophy, asserts Roger Bacon, is a revelation from 
God, and is designed for the exposition of the Scrip- 
ture ; and, while the authority of the fathers is to be 
accepted, such acceptance is to rest not on tradition, 
but on the fact of truth. Revelation and reason are 
always to be found in harmony. " That which is false 
in philosophy cannot be true elsewhere. ' ' 

To epitomize Roger Bacon, it may be said that a 
review of his thoughts and of his works affords solid 
impressions that he was gifted to recognize, in the 
aspect of all that surrounded him, the footprints of 
the Creator, and that his wisdom led him to perceive 
that the secrets of the law, and of the Lawgiver him- 
self, were to be exposed in the study of the material. 
Let us, however, see the Franciscan continued in the 
English lord chancellor. 

Few things, in a review of thinkers, will tend to strike 
one more markedly than an affinity, extending not un- 
frequently to the use of terms, which exists between 
Roger and Francis Bacon, even although so many as 
three hundred and forty-seven years separate the periods 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 169 

of their birth, and that it would seem improbable 
that the latter could have had access to the works of 
the former. That the Baron Verulam is esteemed 
infidel to the faith of the church, and has ofttimes had 
his heresy freely commented on, does not alter the 
likeness, or alter what further we may judge of the 
monk by the reading of the lord.* Indeed, the 
reading of these two men may not but force the im- 
pression that there is here a historical- division of a 
common individual. Or, if one might so express him- 
self, the friar is felt to be the "prodromus," the lord — 
in a sense — the " olla fervet." And, further, such an 
impression, unwarrantable and ungenerous as it may 
seem, is but strengthened by a study of the manners 
and natures of the two individuals, — the one a begging 
Dominican, regardless of the world's honor and of 
man's applause, lost in the boundless fields of nature, 
and lost to himself, finding God no less in the crucibles 
of his laboratory than in that ether in which float 
myriad worlds, than in that law which directs the 
motions of these worlds ; the other, aspirings ambitious 
of honors which philosophy may only show as worth- 
less ; venal, and truckling to men of higher place than 
himself. Himself, however, a man of the world, we 
yield credit to Francis Bacon in affording to philosophy 

* " Why," asked the king, James I., " have you excluded theology 
"from your system ?" 

" If," replied Bacon, " I proceed to treat of it, I shall step out of the 
bark of human reason, and enter into the ship of the church, which is 
only able by the divine compass to rightly direct its course. Neither 
will the stars of philosophy, which have hitherto so nobly shone upon 
us, any longer supply their light : so that on this subject it will be well 
to keep silence." 

12 



lyo 



rillXKERS AND TIIINKIXG. 



its practical expression, in applying it to the every-day 
things of every-day life. ''Ancient philosophy," as 
justly observed by Lord Macaulay, " rather disdained to 
be useful, and was content to be stationary. It dealt 
largely in theories of moral perfection, which were so 
sublime that they never could be more than mere 
theories ; in attempts to solve insoluble enigmas ; in 
exhortations to the attainment of unnatural frames of 
mind. It could not condescend to the humble office 
of ministering to the comfort of human beings. All 
the schools regarded that office as degrading; some 
censured it as immoral. Once, indeed, Posidonius, a 
distinguished writer of the age of Cicero and Csesar, 
so far forgot himself as to enumerate among the hum- 
bler blessings which mankind owed to philosophy the 
discovery of the principle of the arch, and the introduc- 
tion of the use of metals. This eulogy was considered as 
an affront, and was taken up with proper spirit. Seneca 
vehemently disclaims these insulting compliments. 
Philosophy, according to him, has nothing to do with 
teaching men to rear arched roofs over their heads. 
The true philosopher does not care whether he has an 
arched roof or any roof. Philosophy has nothing to 
do with teaching men the use of metals ; she teaches 
us to be independent of all material substances, of all 
mechanical contrivances. . The wise man lives accord- 
ing to nature. The object of the lessons of philosophy 
is not to teach men how to use their hands, but how 
to form the soul."* 



* " In my time," says Seneca, " there have been inventions of this 
sort, — transparent windows, tubes for diffusing warmth equally through 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 17 j 

As a verifier of philosophy, or rather is it to be said 
with greater justice, as a verifier of the natural sciences, 
directing studies — heretofore subservient only to medi- 
tation and to soul-life — towards ends pertaining to the 
interests of every-day living. Lord Bacon must certainly 
be admitted to have utilized the positivism of the friar. 
Here, indeed, to our conception, stands the chan- 
cellor.* 



a building, short-hand, which has been carried to such perfection 
that a writer can keep pace with the most rapid speaker. But the 
invention of such drudgery is for the lowest slaves ; philosophy lies 
deeper." 

* " The difference between the philosophy of Bacon and that of his 
predecessors cannot, we think, be better illustrated than by comparing 
his views on some important subjects with those of Plato. We select 
Plato because we conceive that he did more than any other person to- 
wards giving to the minds of speculative men that bent which they 
retained till they received from Bacon a new impulse in a diametric- 
ally opposite direction. It is curious to observe how differently these 
great men estimated the value of every kind of knowledge. Take 
arithmetic for example. Plato, after speaking slightly of the advan- 
tages of being able to reckon and compute in the ordinary transactions 
of life, passes to what he considers a far more important advantage. 
The study of the properties of numbers, he tells us, habituates the 
mind to the contemplation of pure truth, and raises it above the mate- 
rial universe. He would have his disciples apply themselves to this 
study, — not that they may be able to buy and sell, not that they may 
qualify themselves to be shopkeepers or traveling merchants, but 
that they may learn to withdraw their minds from the ever-shifting 
spectacle of this visible and tangible world, and to fix them on the 
immutable essence of things. Bacon, on the other hand, valued this 
branch of knowledge only on account of its uses with reference to 
that visible and tangible world which Plato so much despised. He 
speaks with scorn of the mystical arithmetic of the later Platonists, 
and laments the propensity of mankind to employ, on mere m.atters of 
curiosity, powers the whole exertion of which is required for purposes 



172 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



In studying the doctrines of Bacon as found ex- 
pounded in his works, particularly the ''Novum Or- 



of solid advantage. He advises arithmeticians to leave their trifles, 
and to employ themselves in framing convenient expressions which 
may be of use in physical researches. 

" The same reasons which led Plato to recommend the study of 
arithmetic led him also to recommend the study of mathematics. 
The vulgar crowd of geometricians, he says, will not understand him. 
They have practice always in view. They do not know that the real 
use of the science is to lead men to the knowledge of the abstract, 
essential, eternal truth. Indeed, if we are to believe Plutarch, Plato 
carried this feehng so far that he considered geometry as degraded by 
being applied to any purpose of vulgar utility. Archytas, it seems, 
had framed machines of extraordinary power, on mathematical prin- 
ciple, Plato remonstrated with his friend, and declared that this was 
to degrade a noble, intellectual exercise into a low craft, fit only for 
carpenters and wheelwrights. The office of geometry, he said, was to 
discipline the mind, not to minister to the base uses of the body. His 
interference was successful; and from that time, according to Plu- 
tarch, the science of mechanics was considered unworthy of the 
attention of a philosopher. 

" An even more practical expression of a difference between the two 
eras of philosophy may be presented in the language of the same 
reviewer concerning the matter of the study of medicine. To Plato, 
this science appeared one of very disputable advantage. He did 
not, indeed, object to quick cures for acute disorders or for injuries 
produced by accidents. But the art which resists the slow sap of a 
chronic disease, which repairs frames enervated by lust, swollen by 
gluttony, or inflamed by wine, — which encourages sensuality by miti- 
gating the natural punishment of the sensualist, and prolongs exist- 
ence when the intellect has ceased to retain its entire energy, — had no 
share in his esteem. A life prolonged by medical skill he pronounced 
to be a long death. The exercise of the art of medicine ought, he 
said, to be tolerated so far as that art may serve to cure the occasional 
distempers of men whose constitutions are good. As to those who 
have bad constitutions, let them die ; and the sooner the better. Such 
men are unfit for war, for magistracy, for the management of domestic 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 173 

ganum," a book which contains the essentials of a 
larger volume, the " Instauratio Magna," we find the 
principle to lie in the inductive method, — a method so 
siiTiple and comprehensible that, in spite of the asser- 
tion of Lord Macaulay, it is possible for ''every man 
to be more or less of a philosopher." It is the method 
of a text of our volume. " We must hear the advice of 
many people, choose what is good in their counsels, 
and follow it ; see much, and reflect maturely on what 
one has seen." ''Logic," affirmed Lord Bacon, "has 
hitherto served more to the establishment of error than 
to the investigation of truth, and the penury of the 
sciences arises from their having broken away from their 
root in nature and experience." The radical reforma- 
tion of the sciences depends upon two conditions, — 
"objectively," referring of science to experience and 
the philosophy of nature, and "subjectively," upon 
the purifying of the sense and the intellect from all 
abstract theories and traditional prejudices. 

The Baconian apothegms — so freely quoted — have 



affairs. That, however, is of little consequence. But they are inca- 
pable of study and speculation. The best thing that can happen to 
such wretches is to have done with life at once. 

" Far different was the philosophy of Bacon. Of all the sciences, 
that which he seems to have regarded with the greatest interest was 
the science which, in Plato's opinion, would not be tolerated in a well- 
regulated community. To make men perfect was no part of Bacon's 
plan. His aim was to make imperfect men comfortable. In Plato's 
opinion, man was made for philosophy ; in Bacon's opinion, philos- 
ophy was made for man ; it was a means to an end, and that end 
was to increase the pleasures and to mitigate the pains of millions 
who are not and cannot be philosophers.' — Review of Bacon's Works 
{Basil Montagu s edition), by Lord Macaulay. 



174 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



come to be associated in the minds of many with a pro- 
fundity of thought and an acumen which incline readers 
to make preference for the good in this form. But 
Bacon, as a philosopher and scientist, is as simple as is 
all true thought simple. The lord chancellor alone 
it is who has been found obscure and complex. We 
may not express this more happily than in the words 
of the reviewer from whom a page back we quoted. 
'' I have often thought," says the historian, "that an 
amusing fiction might be written, in which a disciple 
of Epictetus and a disciple of Bacon should be intro- 
duced as fellow-travelers. They come to a village 
where the smallpox has just begun to rage, and find 
houses shut up, intercourse suspended, the sick aban- 
doned, mothers weeping in terror over their children. 
The Stoic assures the dismayed population that there 
is nothing bad in smallpox, and that to a v/ise man 
diseases, deformity, death, the loss of friends, are not 
evils. The Baconian takes out a lancet and begins to 
vaccinate. They find a body of miners in great dis- 
may. An explosion of noisome vapors has just killed 
many of those who were at work ; and the survivors 
are afraid to venture into the cavern. The Stoic assures 
them that such an accident is mere aTzu-poriYixevov. 
The Baconian, who has no such fine word at his com- 
mand, contents himself in devising a safety- lamp. 
They find a shipwrecked merchant wringing his hands 
on the shore. His vessel, with an inestimable cargo, 
has just gone down, and he is reduced to beggary. 
The Stoic exhorts him not to seek happiness in things 
which lie without himself, and repeats a whole chapter 
of Epictetus. The Baconian constructs a diving-bell, 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



175 



goes down in it, and returns with the most precious 
effects from the wreck." lUustrations, is it to be sug- 
gested, are these of the difference between '^^a philos- 
ophy of thorns and a philosophy of fruit, — a philosophy 
of words and a philosophy of works." 

But Bacon will not impress his reader as being 
a profound scientist : his sphere and position seem 
rather of "opulent-mindedness ;" the science belongs 
to the friar ; this distinctiveness forces itself always 
upon the student. The lord, with bird's-eye view, 
grasped the relation of things ; the friar was content 
with the revelations of his laboratory. Under the first, 
as has been remarked by Mr. Lewes, men began to see 
that they were working nobly as well as usefully in 
limiting their researches to realities, foregoing the de- 
lusive hopes of metaphysics, proceeding cautiously and 
checking the native impatience of mind. And, because 
it may but thus be seen and felt that the one gave a 
method and the other an application, it would seem a 
necessity to recognize that in the two Bacons, — savant 
and philosopher, — and not in Comte, has modern posi- 
tivism its true origin. 

"Whence," asks Lord Bacon, "can arise such 
vagueness and sterility in all the physical systems which 
have hitherto existed in the world ? It is not certainly 
from anything in nature itself; for the steadiness and 
regularity of the laws by which it is governed clearly 
mark them as objects of precise and certain knowledge. 
Neither can it arise from any want of ability in those 
who have pursued such inquiries, many of whom have 
been men of the highest talent and genius of the ages 
in which they lived ; and it therefore arises from no-. 



176 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

thing else but the perverseness and insufficiency of the 
methods which have been pursued. Men have sought 
to make a world from their own conceptions, and to 
draw from their own minds all the materials which they 
employed; but if, instead of doing so, they had con- 
sulted experience and observation, they would have had 
facts, and not opinions, to reason about, and might 
have ultimately arrived at the knowledge of the laws 
which govern the material world. 

" To attain to a knowledge of law is to pursue a course 
contrary to that which has been pursued. It requires 
that we should generalize slowly, going from particular 
things to those that are but one step more general ; 
from those to others of still greater extent, and so on 
to such as are universal." By such means we may hope 
to arrive at principles not vague and obscure, but 
luminous and well defined, such as nature herself will 
not refuse to acknowledge.* 

* The " eidola" of the " Novum Organum" of Francis Bacon are 
of equal simplicity with the common manner of expression of this 
world-famous essay. "The idols," says the chancellor, "which have, 
already occupied the human understanding and are deeply rooted in 
it, not only do beset men's minds, that they become difficult of access 
but, even when access is obtained, will again meet and trouble us in 
the instauration of the sciences, unless mankind, when forewarned, 
guard themselves with all possible care against them. 

" Four species of eidola beset the human mind ; to which — for dis- 
func'tion's sake — we have assigned names ; calling the first, idols of the 
tribe ; the second, idols of the den ; the third, idols of the market ; the 
fourth, idols of the theatre. 

"The formation of notions and axioms on the foundation of true 
induction is the only fitting remedy by which we can ward off and 
expel these idols. It is, however, of great service to point them out. 
For the doctrine of idols bears the same relation to the interpre- 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



177 



A marked and extraordinary feature in the character 
of the man we consider may not but have much mean- 
ing to him who can analyze the possession. At fifteen, 
it is affirmed, the collegian had thought out his sys- 
tem. At twenty, when the flush of life and of passion 
is upon most men, Bacon wrote with the placidity 
of a sage. At tAventy-six, when was produced his 
treatise on the "Sublime and Beautiful," the most 
gorgeous sunset, so the neck of the most enchanting 
beauty, might not betray him into a style unbecoming 
gravest matters ; and yet at fifty and at sixty, and even 



tation of nature as that of confutation of sophisms does to common 
logic." 

The eidola of the tribe are described as being inherent in human 
nature. " For man's sense," he asserts, " is falsely esteemed to be the 
standard of things ; but, on the contrary, all the perceptions, both of 
the senses and of the mind, bear reference to man, and not to the 
universe, and the human mind resembles those uneven mirrors which 
impart their own properties to different objects from which rays are 
emitted, and distort and disfigure them." 

The second eidola are those of the den ; these are the prejudices 
and learnings of the particular individual. " Every man," says Lord 
Bacon, " has within himself an individual den or cavern, which inter- 
cepts and corrupts the light of nature ; so that the spirit of a man — 
according to its several dispositions — is variable, confused, and, as it 
were, actuated by chance." 

The eidola of the market are those "formed by reciprocal inter- 
course and society of man with man ; from the commerce and asso- 
ciation of men with each other. They are the influences of words 
and of manners and of expression. Words manifestly force the under- 
standing, throw everj'thing into confusion, and lead mankind into vain 
and innumerable controversies and fallacies." 

The eidola of the theatre are those which have crept into men's 
minds from the various dogmas of peculiar systems of philosophy, and 
also from the perverted rules of demonstration. 



178 • THINKERS AND THINKING. 

in the midst of all the shame and depression which 
encompassed him in the later years of life, his style 
grew into fragrance and flowers, '^and the tree which 
had borne and cast its fruit covered itself with blos- 
soms. ' ' 

Here we may pass with interest to one whose thoughts 
possess great attraction for all thinkers, — to the French 
sage Descartes, and to what is familiarly spoken of as 
the Cartesian system. 

The true philosopher, assumes Descartes, having as 
his single aim the verification of things, may start 
only in that premise which refuses heed to tradition, to 
expressions of inspiration, to all and everything but to 
that one something which is to him an undeniable 
primal. Having this primal, from it may he under- 
stand and comprehend all things.* 

^^ Seeing," he says, ''that our sense sometimes de- 
ceives us, I am willing to suppose that this is not a 
solitary thing, such as they lead us to imagine ; and, as 
men err in reasoning and fall into paralogism about 



•■• " If science would have anything fixed and abiding, it must begin 
with the primal ground of things ; every presupposition which we may 
have cherished from infancy must be abandoned ; in a word, we must 
doubt at every point to which the least uncertainty is attached. We 
must, therefore, doubt not only the existence of the objects of sense, 
since the senses so frequently deceive, but also the truths of mathe- 
matics and geometry ; for however evident the proposition may appear 
that two and three make five, or that the square has four sides, yet 
we cannot know but what God may have designedly formed us for 
erroneous judgments. It is therefore advisable to doubt everything, 
in fact to deny everything, to posit everything as false." —Review of 
Descartes by Schzveglcr. 



THFNKERS AND THINKING. 1 79 

the simplest things in geometry, I judged that I was as 
open here to mistake as others. I rejected as false all 
the reasons which I had formerly regarded as demon- 
strative ; and in fine, noting that we may have in our 
sleep the very same intellectual impressions and convic- 
tions which we have when we are awake, and which yet 
are deceptive, I resolved to put my waking thoughts on 
the same level of uncertainty as my dreams."* 

What is called '^ rationalism" in contradistinction 
to empiricism, which is the designation of the philoso- 
phy of Bacon, — being that mode of thought which 
admits nothing a prioi'i, allowing that only to be true 
which is verified by experience,']' — is the philosophy of 
Descartes. Back of experience, says Descartes, is rea- 
son, for without reason experience is not. '' There 
cannot," says Sir G. C. Lewis, ''be a body of rules 
without a rationale, and this rationale constitutes the 
science. There were poets before there were rules of 
poetical composition ; but before Aristotle, or Horace, 
or Boileau, or Pope could write their Arts of Poetry 
and criticism, they had considered in their own minds 



* Discourse of Method. 

f "Among the Greek physicians, those who founded their practice on 
experience called themselves empirics; those who relied on theory, 
methodists ; and those who held a middle course, dogmatists. The 
term empiricism became naturalized in England when the writings 
of Galen and other opponents of the empirics were in repute, and 
hence it was applied generally to any ignorant pretender to knowledge. 
It is now used to denote that kind of knowledge which is the result of 
experience. Aristotle applies the terms historical and empirical in the 
same sense. Historical knowledge is the knowledge that a thing is ; 
philosophical knowledge is the knowledge of its cause, or why it is." — 
Krauth' s Fleming. 



i8o THINKERS AND THINKING. 

a theory of the art. In like manner, there were navi- 
gators before there was an art of navigation ; but 
before the art of navigation could teach the methods of 
finding the ship's place by observation of the heavenly 
bodies, the science of astronomy must have explained 
the system of the world." 

Thus, although Descartes was among the most de- 
vout of the devout sons of the church, would he dis- 
card revelation and all the truths of the Bible. A 
principle, he might be supposed to say, exists anterior 
to revelation ; in this principle is man to find — if any- 
where it is to be found — the proof of the truth of reve- 
lation and demonstration of his own relations. 

Rene Descartes was born, of Breton parents, in a 
town of Touraine, in 1596. His mother, sick with 
disease of the lungs, to an extent which carried her 
off but a few days after the lying-in, it was but to 
be anticipated that the son should be of weakly con- 
stitution and but of little physique. To such extent 
was this anticipation realized, that in a sickly boy, 
who dragged himself along when his playfellows ran in 
the fullness of life, was it not easy to see the philoso- 
pher who so few years later was to astonish the thinking 
world with his ''Meditations." 

Educated by the Jesuits, in the college of La Fleche, 
where he was instructed in mathematics, physics, logic, 
rhetoric, and the ancient languages, he is affirmed as 
leaving his school on the completion of his course with 
the declaration ''that he had alone learned how utterly 
ignorant he Avas, and that the various systems of phi- 
losophy deserved but contempt. * ' 

Uncertainty, if not, as pronounced by Mr. Lewes, 



THINKERS AND THINKING. i8i 

the disease of the epoch, was assuredly the dis-ease of 
Descartes. A criterion was felt to be needed, and the 
student could find in the systems of his day no such 
criterion. "Unable to discover firm ground in any of 
the prevalent systems ; distracted by doubts ; mistrust- 
ing the conclusions of his own understanding ; mis- 
trusting the evidences of his senses, he determined to 
make a tabula /asa, and reconstruct his knowledge. He 
resolved to examine the premises of every conclusion, 
and to believe nothing but upon the clearest evidence 
of reason: evidence so convincing that he could not 
by any efi'ort refuse to assent to it. 

In his philosophy, Descartes commences with a uni- 
versal doubt. Nothing is to be accepted as a premise 
which stands not of and in itself irrefutable. First, 
he must doubt the existence of the external world, for 
this may be a phantasm. He must doubt the existence 
of God, for the idea of God may be a superstition. 
So he doubts of all things, until, by exclusion, he 
arrives at the principle of thinking. "In the very 
act," he says, "of wishing to think that all other things 
were false, it was impossible for me to doubt that I, 
who was thinking, was something ; and remarking that 
this truth, 'I am thinking, therefore I am,' is so 
firm and sure that the wildest extravagances of the 
skeptic cannot overthrow it, I judged that I could, 
without scruple^ lay it down as the primary principle 
(or foundation) of philosophy, for which I was seeking. ' ' 

From this first principle follows necessarily that 
second which constitutes the premises of the Cartesian 
system; that is, "that which is included in the idea 
of anything is to be affirmed of that thing." This is 



l82 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

happily put by Professor Krauth in his '' Class Notes : " 
*'I am doubting, therefore I am thinking; I am think- 
ing, therefore I am, " " That, ' ' says Descartes, ' ' cannot 
doubt which does not think, and that cannot think 
which does not exist. I doubt. I think. I exist." 
He affirmed thinking as contained in doubting, and 
existence as contained in thinking, and hence made 
the universal deduction that everything is to be affirmed 
that is thus embraced in the idea; hence the soul, whose 
existence is necessarily involved in its thinking, is an 
entity, existing pe?' se ; it is substance ; it is distinct 
from external things, and independent, inasmuch as, if 
these things did not exist, it would be, and would 
think. "lam a thinking thing (/-^'j cogitans), i.e. I am 
a mind (j?iens), or soul (animus), or intellect {ijitellectus), 
or reason {ratio). The thinking thing is a thing that 
doubts, understands, affirms, denies, desires, rejects, 
imagines, and perceives. The mind knows itself as sub- 
ject to doubt, limited and imperfect. In this is 
involved that it has an idea of being, or a being not 
subject to doubt, not limited, not imperfect, hence of 
an absolutely perfect being. This idea cannot be the 
product of the soul itself, as it is an imperfect sub- 
stance ; hence it is innate to it. This conception of 
innate ideas is one of the great determining ones in 
philosophy. But this idea in the soul could not be 
innate to it unless it were given by that Being himself 
who is absolutely perfect ; therefore a being absolutely 
perfect necessarily exists." There exists a God."^ 



-■• " It is somewhat curious, and, as an illustration of the frivolous 
verbal disputes of philosophers, not a little instructive, that the cele- 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 183 

Consciousness, then, in the system of Descartes, is 
the basis of truth. Whatever, — asserts this system, — 
consciousness proclaims, must be true. "All clear 
ideas are true. The clear replies of consciousness will 
be science. Science, exact and clear, is truth." 

At this point we are prepared to see a Descartes 
able to demonstrate, in his premises, the existence of 
his God of the revelations. Having, in consciousness, 
found a basis, he needed but to seek a method of certi- 
tude; his start-point here was mathematics.* Who 

brated ' Cogito, ergo sum,' should have been frequently attacked for 
its logical imperfection. It has been objected, from Gassendi down- 
ward, that to say ' I think, therefore I am,' is a begging of the 
question, since existence has to be proved identical with thought. 
Certainly, if Descartes had intended to prove his own existence by 
reasoning, he would have been guilty of ihe. petitio principii Gassendi 
attributes to him, viz., that the major premise, 'that which thinks 
exists,' is assumed, not proved. What was his object? He has told 
us that it was to find a starting-point from which to reason, — to find an 
irreversible certainty. And where did he find this? In his own con- 
sciousness. Doubt as I may, I cannot doubt of my own existence, 
because my very doubts reveal to me a something which doubts. You 
may call this an assumption, if you will; I point out the fact as one 
above and beyond all logic ; which logic can neither prove nor 
disprove ; but which must always remain an irreversible certainty, 
and as such a fitting basis of philosophy." — Lewes : on the " Medi- 
tations." 

"* " The criterion of true knowledge is not to be looked for anywhere 
abroad without our own minds, neither in the heights above, nor in 
the depth beneath ; but only in our knowledge and conceptions them- 
selves. For the entity of all theoretical truth is nothing else but clear 
intelligibility, and whatever is clearly conceived is an entity and a 
truth ; but that which is false, divine power itself cannot make it to 
be clearly and distinctly understood; because falsehood is a non-entity, 
and a clear conception is an entity ; and omnipotence itself cannot 
make a non-entity to be an entity." — CUDWORTH. 



1 84 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

might doubt the certitude of this science? ''The long 
chain of reasoning," he says, "all simple and easy, 
which geometers use to arrive at their most difficult 
demonstrations, suggested to me that all things which 
come within human knowledge must follow each other 
in a similar chain, and that, provided we abstain from 
admitting anything as true which is not so, and that 
we always preserve in them the order to deduce the 
one from the other, there can be none so remote to 
which we cannot finally attain, nor so obscure but 
that we may discover them." 

As a fact, containing within itself its own proof, is 
the assertion that in every triangle exists the equality to 
two right angles. So exists, with like demonstration, 
a conception of the existence of substance and matter. 

Substance, in this system, is the absolute ; it is that 
which needs nothing apart from itself that it may exist. 
There may be one thing only independent of all other 
things. This one thing is that in which all other things 
live and have life. All things, save this one substance, 
are expressions of extension. This one thing is indi- 
vidual ; it is the power which diffuses ', it is that in 
which matter has action. That, then, which is the 
essence of life is, of necessity, the origin of life. The 
origin of life may exist only in that which is greater 
than life ; this greater may alone be the God : ergo, 
God is self-proving. 

As then in our consciousness, may the Cartesian 
system be quoted as affirming, we find the existence of 
substance and matter, so are we compelled to recognize 
in man a dualism of soul and body. Soul is thought, and 
is persistent ; body pertains to the attributes of exten- 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 185 

sion, and may, therefore, have but a mechanical rela- 
tion with' soul. The body is an automatic instrument, 
serving the conveniences and the requirements of the 
soul ; this, and nothing more. A body receives no new 
attribute in its reception of a soul ; a soul has no 
change effected in its nature through its entrance into 
a body. Body being matter, and matter having as its 
chief attribute extension, a body is in the state of con- 
tinuous change. Soul, being thought, may have no 
changes produced in it by the changes of the body. 

At such a point may Descartes introduce us to him 
who seems so immediately his successor, Spinoza, and 
through whom are we led the more fully to understand 
the French thinker. 

Spinoza — he of whom it is so common to speak as of 
a man ''God-intoxicated," he who has been reviled as 
the worst of men, and on the contrary lauded as being 
but little lower than an angel — was a German Jew, born, 
of rich parentage, at Amsterdam in 1632. Possessed, 
through the liberality of his father, of extensive educa- 
tional acquirements, he soon made himself celebrated 
for his knowledge of theological matters, which, how- 
ever, did not seem sufficient to hold him attached to 
Judaism, as at quite an early period of life we find 
him discussing with the doctors of the synagogue the 
presumed fallacies of their doctrines, and as well we see 
him an ardent student of the Cartesian system. 

Substance, affirmed Spinoza, — and this is the basis 
of his system, — is the sum of the all. Substance is 
'' the cause of itself;" its being concludes existence in 
itself; substance is the positive; substance is nature; 

J3 



1 86 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

substance is God. In Spinoza we find the fullest ex- 
pression of pantheism. God is everything; everything 
is but an extension of God.* '' By substance," he 
says, "I understand that which exists in itself and is 
conceived /^rj-^;" in other words, the conception of 
which does not require the conception of anything else 
antecedent to it. ''By God I understand the Being 
absolutely infinite, i.e., the substance consisting of in- 
finite attributes, each of which expresses an infinite and 
eternal essence." 

Two other substances besides the primal, created by 
the primal, are there, says Descartes, these being mind 
(thought) and body (matter). Soul and body, says 
the system of Spinoza, are attributes of a common 
substance, — are expressions of God. " By attribute I 
understand," says Spinoza, " that which the mind per- 
ceives as constituting the very essence of substance. ' ' 

Comprehending the premise of Spinoza, the oneness of 
the material with the Theos is, in a moment, made evi- 
dent ; the soul of aman is God, yet not less so is the matter 
of the body ; God is everything, everything is God. 



•••" In no expression has any of the philosophers seemed less -under- 
stood than in this word " substance," used by Spinoza. A pity it was, 
and is, as forcibly suggests Mr. Lewes, that he had not used Greek 
instead of Latin, and called his substance noumenon, — ground of 
existence, " God is existence." He alone truly exists. Whatever else 
may be conceived as existing, exists in and through him ; it is a mani- 
festation of his being. This is also the language of St. Paul, which 
is chosen by Spinoza as his epigraph: " In him we Hve, and move, 
and have our being." Is it not curious to note, further suggests Mr. 
Lewes, how slight a verbal change will dispel the common charge of 
atheism, and show that, in denying the reality of the transitory world, 
Spinoza affirmed the reality of God as the one fountain of all life. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



187 



In studying Spinoza, the great and chief lesson to 
learn is, of the condition and nature of the law which 
governs life. Let him who would comprehend Spinoza, 
and who would not do him injustice, think of him 
solely as an expounder in law. Life is in law ; the law 
has in it no variation. Spinoza preaches to man God 
as the author of eternal, changeless, and inexorable 
law. ''Let law be obeyed, and it is found man's 
minister; let law be disobeyed, and it is found man's 
executioner." "Nor is God a deity to be bought off 
from his resolves by a price of any kind, even the 
sacrifice of that which is nearest and dearest, as the 
Jews of old conceived him; nor by lip-service ; or even 
heart-felt repentance may not induce him to. pardon 
sin, condone misdeed, and take the evil-doer into his 
favor." " God, verily, is no king or minister of state, 
who, at his arbitrary will and pleasure, remits the sen- 
tence of the righteous judge. God never forgives trans- 
gression, but exacts to the uttermost the penalties he 
has attached to every infraction of his eternal decrees. 
Abusing our natural power and appetites, or exposing 
ourselves to influences inimical to health, we fall sick ; 
taking poison, we die; putting to sea in leaky and over- 
laden ships, we are drowned."* 

Few greater thinkers has the world produced than 
Spinoza; few thinkers have been more reviled and 
more derided by the world. Simple in his nature and 
habits, to an extent scarcely to be appreciated in these 
modern days of luxury and expenditure, the lessons of 
his daily living, not less than of his philosophy, over- 

* Introduction to Spinoza: Willis. 



1 88 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

flow with suggestions. Abundance was not, to him, 
necessity; life was too full of enrapturing reflections to 
be wasted in the provision of corporeal superfluities ; 
enough was enough, and enough was oftentimes found 
in the expenditure of threepence a day. A philosopher 
and gentleman, he was never intolerant of the opinions 
of others. A simple anecdote related by Colerus ex- 
hibits this aspect of his character. 

His landlady, Madame Van den Spyck, aware that 
her lodger had great reputation for learning, took occa- 
sion one day to consult him upon the form of religion 
she professed, inquiring anxiously whether he thought 
it sufficient to secure her eternal happiness. ''Your 
religion^" he made answer, ''is a good religion: you 
have no occasion to seek after another ; neither need 
you doubt of your eternal welfare, as, along with your 
pious observances, you continue to lead a life of peace 
in charity with all." 

A close study of Spinoza, particularly of his Ethics, 
must impress that in what is called natural religion few 
better guides are to be found. " Force," says he, " will 
coerce before love may be understood." The religion 
of Spinoza is a religion of force ; of that force which 
is law. One may believe what he will, say what he 
pleases, but he is to keep out of the way of the on-rolling 
wheels of fate. No mercy have these, no discretion ; 
he who lives in law lives in God ; he who lives in law 
lives — in the highest sense — to the fullness of life. 

* Spinoza, who is accused by Van Bleyenberg of reducing man to 
the level of the elements, of denying the use of prayer, etc., thus 
answers : 

" As intelligent beings we can submit ourselves, mind and body 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 189 

" Ach, waren all Menschen wijs, 
En wilden darby wel ; 
De Aard waar haar een Paradijs, 
Nu is ze meest een Hel." 

without show of superstition, to God ; and without denying that 
prayer may be extremely useful to us ; for my understanding is too 
limited to take in all the means that God has provided whereby men 
may be brought to the love of him, in other words, to salvation. My 
opinions, therefore, are as remote as possible from everything pernici- 
ous. On the contrary, they indicate most plainly the only means by 
which they who are not possessed by prejudices and superstition may 
attain to the highest degree of blessedness. 

"What you say about my making man so entirely dependent on 
God as to reduce him to the level of the elements and plants, shows 
clearly that you have most~ perversely misunderstood me, and that 
you confound things of the understanding with things of the imagina- 
tion. Had you truly understood the meaning of the words, depend- 
ence on God, you would not assuredly have thought that things in 
their dependence are either dead or material merely, and imperfect. 
Wlio has ever dared to speak so unworthily of the most perfect of 
beings ! You would, on the contrary, have seen that it is really and 
truly as things depend on God that they are perfect ; so that we best 
comprehend this dependence, this necessary course of all in con- 
formity with the eternal decrees of God, by giving our minds to the 
contemplation of the most comprehensible and perfect of qreated 
things, to the highest conceptions of the understanding, and not to 
the consideration of stocks and stones. 

" I cannot refrain from expressing my especial surprise that you 
should ask, ' If God punish not the. sins of men, what should hinder 
me from committing all sorts of iniquities?' Here you speak of God 
as a judge who inflicts punishment, and not of that which the sin or 
crime carries with it of itself. But the distinction here is the entire 
question between us. Certainly, he who abstains from wickedness 
through fear of punishment only — and I will not think of you in this 
wise — acts not from any feeling of love or sense of duty, and is any- 
thing but truly virtuous. For my own part, I repudiate such morality ; 
I live, or strive to live, free from offense ; to do otherwise were repug- 
nant to my nature, and would make me feel estranged from the knowl- 
edge and love of God," 



iQo THINKERS AND THINKING. 

" Were all men only good and wise, 
And willed but to do well, 
This earth were then a Paradise, 
As now 'tis 'most a hell." 

There is no philosophy, says Lessing, but that of 
Spinoza. ''He/' says Mr. Lewes, ''who accepts the 
verdict of the mind as not merely relative truth, but 
the perfect, the absolute truth, may only — humanly 
speaking — find refuge in Spinozism." "If," says Dr. 
Willis, "philosophy had its birth for modern times 
from Descartes, — as it had, it exerted its highest influ- 
ence over European thought through Spinoza. . . . 
For to us Hegelianism, stripped of all that is extrava- 
gant and obscure, embraces little or nothing that is 
not discoverable in plain and easily comprehended 
terms in the Ethics of Spinoza. " 

The Ethics of this great thinker are comprised 
in five books. These, starting with God, end with 
the discussion of human freedom, or the "power 
of the intellect." In the first, that treating of 
God, Spinoza commences with the following defi- 
nitions : — 

" By its own cause I understand that the essence of 
which involves existence ; or that which by its nature 
can only be conceived as existing." "The thing is 
said to be finite in its kind which may be limited by 
another thing of the same nature." "By Substance 
I understand that which is self-comprised and is con- 
ceived of by and through itself alone; that is to say, 
substance is that the conception of which requires 
the conception of no other thing whence it has to be 
derived." "By Attribute I mean that which the 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 191 

understanding apprehends in substance as constituting 
its essence." ''By Mode I understand an affection of 
substance, or that which is in something else, by which 
also it is apprehended." ''By God I understand the 
Absolutely Infinite Being; in other words, God is 
substance constituted by an infinity of attributes, each 
of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence." 
" The thing is said to be free which exists by the sole 
necessity of its nature and is determined to action by 
itself alone." "By Eternity I understand existence 
itself, — very existence." "All that is is either in itself 
or in something other than itself." " That which can- 
not be conceived by another thing must be conceived 
by itself." "From a given determinate cause an effect 
necessarily follows ; and, contrariwise, without a given 
determinate cause it is impossible that an effect can fol- 
low." " Knowledge of an effect depends on knowledge 
of a cause, and' involves the same." " Things that have 
nothing in common cannot severally be understood by 
one another, or the conception of one does not involve 
the conception of the other." "A true idea must 
agree with its object." "Whatever can be thought of 
as non-existing does not, in its essence, involve exist- 
ence." "Substance is prior in Nature to its affec- 
tions. " "To exist belongs to the nature of substance. ' ' 
"All substance is necessarily infinite." "By body I 
understand a mode which in a certain definite way ex- 
presses the essence of God, considered as an extended 
entity. To the Essence of a particular thing apper- 
tains that ' which, abstracted, the thing necessarily 
ceases to be. In other words, the essence of a thing 
is that without which it cannot be conceived to be ; 



192 



TIJ INKERS AND THINKING. 



and, vice versa, that, which without, the thing neither 
is nor can be conceived as being." 

To one not trained in thinking, the elaborate argu- 
mentation of Spinoza is not apt to be found entertain- 
ing ; but to him who looks beyond the surface of a 
reading, every sentence is replete with suggestiveness 
which enraptures and elevates. 

Let us, with what justice we may, try to epitomize 
this thinker as he lives and expresses himself in his 
dissertations "on God" and "on the Soul." 

Substance, he affirms, is prior in nature to its affec- 
tions. Two substances having different attributes have 
nothing in common with one another. Things that 
have nothing in common cannot be cause one of 
another. Two or more different things are distin- 
guishable from each other either by diversity of the 
attributes of substances, or by diversity in the affec- 
tions of these attributes. All that is, is either in itself 
or in something else ; that is to say, there is nothing 
out of or beyond the understanding, except substances 
and their affections. There is, consequently, nothing 
out of the understanding by which individual things can 
be distinguished from each other except substances, or 
— and this comes to the same thing — their attributes 
and affections. To exist belongs to the nature of sub- 
stance. All substance is necessarily infinite. Sub- 
stance of attribute exists not save as one, and to exist 
belongs to its nature. It will, therefore, be in its 
nature to exist finitely or infinitely. Not finitely, 
however, for then would it have to be conceived as 
limited by another substance of the same nature, which 
would also have to exist necessarily, in which case there 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 1(^3 

would be two substances of the same attribute, which 
is absurd, as, in the nature of things, there cannot 
be two or more substances of the same nature or 
attribute. 

As finity is, in truth, partial negation, and infinity 
absolute affirmation of existence of every kind, it fol- 
lows that, as to exist belongs to the nature of substances, 
all substances must be infinite. 

The absolutely infinite substance is invisible. The 
only substance that exists, or that can be conceived to 
exist, is God. Since God is the absolutely infinite 
being to whom no attribute which is, or which ex- 
presses the essence of substance, can be denied, did any 
substance other than God exist it would have to be 
interpreted by some attribute of God, and thus would 
two substances of the same attribute coexist, which is 
impossible. Wherefore, beside or beyond God no 
substance can exist or be conceived as existing. Now 
follows it clearly that God is sole or single ; for, one 
absolutely infinite entity existing, anything different 
may not be, for one substance cannot be produced by 
another substance. It follows also that the extended 
thing and the thinking thing — thought and extension 
— are either attributes of God, or are modes or affec- 
tions of the attributes of God, as all that is is either 
in itself or in something other than itself. Whatever, 
then, is, is in God, and nothing can be, neither can 
anything be conceived to be, v\-ithout God. 

Concerning individual things, it is to be affirmed 
that they are finite, and have a determinate existence. 
The essence of a man does not involve necessary exist- 
ence : that is, it might as well happen in the order of 



194 THINKERS AND rillNKING. 

nature that this or that man existed as that he did not 
exist. 

Man thinks. 

Thought is an attribute of God, or God is a think- 
ing entity. Individual thoughts, or this and that 
thought, are modes which express the nature of God 
in a certain and determinate manner. To God, there- 
fore, belongs an attribute, the concept of which involves 
all particular thoughts, — the concept whereby these are 
all conceived. Thought, consequently, is one of the 
infinite attributes of God which expresses his infinite and 
eternal essence. The truth of this proposition appears 
also in that we can conceive an infinite thinking being. 
For the more a thinking entity can think, the more of 
reality or perfection do we conceive it to embrace. 
The entity, therefore, capable of thinking in infinite 
ways is necessarily infinite in virtue of its thoughts. 

Of What is called the vulgar notion of God, our 
philosopher thus discourses : 

Some persons feign to themselves an image of God 
consisting like man of a body and mind, and suscepti- 
ble of passions. But how far these persons fail of the 
true knowledge must appear from our demonstrations. 
Body contains measurement, having quantity, length, 
breadth, thickness, and being bounded by definite out- 
line. Now, nothing can be more absurd than a concep- 
tion of this kind associated with God, the absolutely 
infinite being. 

By the power of God the vulgar understand the free- 
will of God and his right over all things, which are 
therefore commonly considered as contingent. For 
they say that God has the power of destroying all things 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



195 



and reducing them to nothing. Moreover, they very 
commonly compare the power of God with the power 
of an earthly potentate. But God acts by the same as 
that whereby he understands himself; that is to say, as 
from the necessity of the divine nature it follows that 
God understands himself, of the same necessity it fol- 
lows that God enacts an infinity of things in an infinity 
of ways ; that the power of God is his essence in act, 
so that it is even impossible for us to conceive of God 
not acting as it is to conceive of him not existing. 
The vulgar idea of God is not only human in its kind, 
which proves that God is always thought of as a man and 
as possessed of mere human faculties, but even involves 
imperfection and impotence. 

In the definitions and propositions of the essay on 
Human Slavery, Spinoza thus opens his subject : 

By GOOD I understand that which we know for certain 
to be useful to us. 

By EVIL I understand that which we know for certain 
prevents us from enjoying something good. 

The knowledge of good and evil is nothing more 
than an emotion of joy or sorrow, in so far as we are 
conscious of the same. 

Every one by the law of his nature necessarily desires 
that which he deems good, and shuns that which he 
deems evil. 

The more an individual seeks what is useful to him, 
that is, the more he strives and is able to conserve his 
state of being, the greater is the virtue with which he 
is endowed ; and contrariwise, the more an individual 
neglects what is useful to him, the more incomplete is 
he in every way. 



196 



THIXKERS AND THINKING. 



Spinoza, in his argumentation, is found to depend 
quite exclusively on defniitions, propositions, and 
demonstrations ; for example, 

Froposition. — No virtue can be conceived prior to 
this, the self-preservative effort. 

Demonstration. — The self-preservative effort is the 
very essence of a thing. Were any virtue, therefore, 
conceived prior to this, the essence of the thing would 
be conceived prior to the thing itself, which is absurd. 
This effort or energy is the first and sole foundation of 
all virtue ; for no principle cafl. be conceived prior to 
this, and without it no virtue is conceivable. 

In a work written by Spinoza, the " Tractatus The- 
ologico-politicus," would seem to have commenced 
Biblical criticism.* I will write this book, says 
Spinoza, to show Christian nations that they have not 
as yet understood the Bible. Of this misunderstand- 
ing the philosopher felt he might rest assured in wit- 
nessing the strife and contentions of the various sects. 
Where should be ''joy, love, and peace in believing is, 
on the contrary, hatred, strife, and bitterness." "I 
will show these people that, taking the Bible for 
granted, taking it to be all which it asserts itself to 
be, taking it to have all the authority which it claims, 
it is not what they imagine it to be, it does not say 
what they imagine it to say. I will show them what 
it really does say, and I will show them that they will 
do well to accept the real teaching of the Bible, instead 



••• Spinoza, however, refers frequently to Aben-Ezra, the Spanish 
Jew, and to Maimonides, Moses Ben-Maimon, the rabbi. See, for 
description of them. Dr. Thomas's Biographical Dictionary. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



197 



of the phantom with which they have been so long 
cheated. I will show their governments that they will 
do well to remodel the national churches, — to make 
them institutions informed with the spirit of the true 
Bible, instead of institutions informed with the spirit 
of this false phantom."* 

In the expressions just quoted, we are most firmly 
impressed, — after gaining what we think is an under- 
standing of the philosopher, — lies the fullness of the 
meaning of what Spinoza deemed his mission. The 
sage must impress as a man not only of widest out- 
look, but of sublime elevation in character. God-in- 
toxicated truly was he, and his God was ever with him. 
We may but smile in pitying contempt, as did Spinoza 
himself, v»'-hen we read of the maledictions of the Jewish 
church, and imagine the dripping of the black candles 
into vessels of blood. " We beseech thee, great God," 
cried, in lugubrious tones, the chanter, as he uttered 
the curse against this man now thought so good and 
great, — '^ we beseech thee to confound such a man, and 
to hasten the day of his destruction ! O God, the God 
of spirits, depress him under all flesh ! extirpate, de- 
stroy, exterminate, annihilate him ! The ire of the 
Lord, the most contagious storms and winds, fall upon 
the heads of impious men ; the exterminating angel 
will fall upon them. Cursed be he wherever he turn ! 
his soul shall go out from him in terror. His death 
be in dire sickness \ his spirit shall not pass away. God 
send the sharpest and most violent evils upon him ! 
Let him perish by a burning fever ; by a consumption, 

* Arnold. 



198 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



being dried up by fire within, and covered with leprosy 
and imposthumes without ! Let God never forgive his 
sins ! Let the wrath and indignation of the Lord sur- 
round him and smoke forever on his head ! Let all 
the curses contained in the Book of the Law fall upon 
him ! Let God blot him from under the heavens ! Let 
God separate him to his own destruction from all the 
tribes of Israel, and give him for his lot all the curses 
contained in the Book of the Law ! " ' ' Un miserable ! ' ' 
repeats Malebranche ; ''Wie ein heiliger!" cries the 
good Schleiermacher.* 

Nothing but the most unimpressible ignorance, it 
would seem, could have misread Spinoza. So careful 
was he of giving offense, so conscious that truth may 
baffle even as much as error, that, rather than commit 
his wider thoughts even to a pupil, he composed, as 
easier of understanding, his first work, the ''Princi- 
pia Philosophise Cartesianae," a work that only at 
length found its way to the printing-press through the 
entreaties of learned doctors and discerning friends. 
''What do you fear? why do you hesitate?" asks 
Oldenburg, one of these friends. ''Go forward, most 



-;■:- «' Offer up reverently with me," said Friedrich Ernst Schleier- 
macher, in the midst of one of his sermons, " a lock of hair to the 
manes of the holy but rejected Spinoza! The great spirit of the 
universe filled his sou^; the Infinite to him was beginning and end, 
the universal his sole and only love. Dwelling in holy innocence and 
deep humihty among men, he saw himself mirrored in the eternal 
world, and the eternal world not at all unworthily reflected back in 
him. Full of religion was he, — full of the Holy Ghost ; and therefore 
it is that he meets us standing alone in his age, raised above the profane 
multitude, master in his art, but without disciples and the citizen's 
rights." 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



199 



excellent sir ; throw aside your dread of giving offense 
to the pigmies of our day ; the battle with ignorance 
has lasted long enough. Let true science now advance 
on her own course, and penetrate more deeply than 
she has yet done into the innermost sanctuary of 
nature. Wherefore fear the dislike of the ignorant 
mobility ? I entreat you, by our friendly compact, by 
all the rights of truth to be proclaimed and spread 
abroad, that you hesitate no longer to communicate 
your writings to the world." 

In a correspondence long continued between Spinoza 
and this same Oldenburg, afterwards Secretary to the 
Royal Society of London, we find ourselves best able to 
understand the religion of his philosophy.* One sen- 
tence taken from a letter written by Oldenburg to the 
philosopher introduces us to the Secretary. ''Let 
nothing appear," he writes, ''in the forthcoming work 
that might be construed into disregard of the religious 
virtues." Oldenburg was a Lutheran of the strongest 
prejudices, and in inviting and encouraging the pub- 
lication of the thoughts of Spinoza, did so in the full 
belief, founded on his own educational acquirements, 
that they might only embellish with brighter halo the 
teachings of revelation. 

"Many think," writes Oldenburg, referring to the 
" Tractatus Theologico-Politicus," "that you confound 
God with Nature, that you detract from the authority 

* The interested reader will find in the life of Spinoza, by Willis, an 
extensive and most instructive correspondence between the philoso- 
pher and many learned thinkers of his time, with De Vries, Louis 
Meyer, Balling, Van Bleyenberg, Leibnitz, Fabricius, Schaller, Albert 
Burgh, etc. 



200 THIA'KERS AND THINKING. 

and value of the miracles, sole assurances of divine re- 
velations ; and that you do not speak clearly of Jesus 
Christ as the Redeemer of the world, and of his Incar- 
nation and Propitiatory Sacrifice." 

''As to miracles," replies Spinoza, ''I have shown 
that to me the assurance of a divine revelation is com- 
prised in the excellence of the doctrine ; the chief dis- 
tinction between religion and superstition being this ; 
that whilst the former has wisdom for its foundation, 
the latter rests on ignorance alone ; and I believe that 
the reason why Christians are not distinguished from 
other religious persuasions by their faith, charity, and 
other fruits of the Holy Spirit, is because they mostly 
appeal to miracles, i.e., to ignorance, source of all evil, 
and so turn their faith, ti'ue thoicgh it be, into supersti- 
tion. " " To give you my mind clearly and unreservedly 
on your third topic. I say that to salvation it is by 
no means necessary to know Christ according to the 
flesh ; and that a very different conception is to be 
formed of that eternal Son of God, that is, of the eter- 
nal wisdom of God which manifests itself in all things, 
in the human mind especially, and most especially of 
all in Jesus Christ. Without this conception no one 
can attain to the state of beatitude : inasmuch as it 
alone informs us of what is true or false, good or evil. 
By no means may I subject God to fate or destiny of 
any kind ; for I hold that it is from the nature of God 
that all things follow of inevitable necessity, even as 
all conceive that it follows from his nature that God 
necessarily knows himself. No one denies this, yet 
does therefore no one conceive that God is constrained 
by fate to know himself; on the contrary, all admit 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 201 

that God knows himself freely yet necessarily. And, 
then, the inevitable necessity of things abrogates neither 
divine nor human law. For moral truths in themselves, 
whether they have or have not the form of human law 
or of commandments from God, are nevertheless divine 
and salutary ; and whether we receive the good which 
follows of virtue, and the divine love, from God as a 
lawgiver and judge, or as a sequence from the neces- 
sity of his divine nature, it will be neither more nor 
less desirable : even as the evil that comes of evil deeds 
and depraved appetites is not the less to be feared 
because it flows of necessity from these. Moreover, 
men are inexcusable before God for no other reason 
than because m^^re in the power of God, as clay in 
the hands of the potter, who of the same lump makes 
one vessel to honor, another to dishonor." 

It is affirmed, and, as must be seen, with great show of 
fact, that the intellectuality of Spinoza may not wisely 
govern the masses; but this we are compelled to see 
resides not so much in the system as in the people; 
the good of Spinoza is the law as seen by him in God. 
Let the reader fully appreciate this by turning back to 
the words addressed by Socrates to Euthydemus. A 
fault in Spinoza — a great fault, as applicable to the 
present time — lay in his non-comprehension of the self- 
ish foolishness of men. Beatitude, he affirms, is not 
to be considered as the i^eward of virtue; it is itself 
virtue. Man does not enjoy true happiness because he 
restrains his lusts: on the contrary, it is because he 
enjoys true happiness that he is able to restrain his 
lusts. 

The study of Spinoza so enlarges itself, that one 



202 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

must find it difficult to come to any end. We con- 
clude, however, with one of his speeches, extracted 
from the conclusion of the fifth part of his Ethics : 

''Most men appear to think themselves free only 
when they can give full play to their lusts, and fancy 
they are hindered of their rights when held to live in 
conformity with the prescriptions of the divine law. 
They therefore esteem piety and religion, and every- 
thing absolutely that is referred to magnanimity of 
mind, to be loads which they hope to lay down after 
death, when they hope they will receive the rewards 
of their slavery — the piety and religion, to wit — which 
they have endured in life. Nor are they even entirely 
led by such hope as this to live, in so far as the poverty 
and impotency of their minds permit them, in con- 
formity with the commands of the divine law : it is 
much rather the fear of frightful punishment after death 
which influences them. Were not such hopes and fears 
implanted in mankind, it is said, were they to believe, 
on the contrary, that the mind or soul perishes with 
the body, and that there is no immortality in store for 
the wretched toiling, sinking under a load of pious 
observations, they would yield to their natural bent, 
give the rein in all things to their lusts, and make for- 
tune, rather than themselves, the guide and arbiter of 
their lives. But such notions seem to me not less 
absurd than it were to suppose that a man, because he 
did not believe he could nourish his body with whole- 
some food to all eternity, should put himself upon a 
regimen of poisons, or because, not believing that his 
soul was eternal or immortal, he should therefore elect 
to live like one demented and without reason. Such 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 203 

absurdities I do not deem worthy of serious discussion. 
, . . The ignorant man, indeed, besides being agitated 
in many and various ways by external causes, and never 
tasting true peace of mind, lives in a state of uncon- 
sciousness of himself, of God, and of all things, and 
only ceases to suffer when he ceases to be. The wise 
man, on the contrary, in so far as he is to be truly so 
considered, scarcely knows what mental perturbation 
means ; but, conscious of himself, of God, and of the 
special eternal necessity of things, never ceases from 
being, but is always in possession of true peace of mind. 
But all good things are as difficult of attainment as they 
are rare." 

In Spinozism is recognized the very fullness of pan- 
theism, — the soul of man is, as man finds himself able 
to understand that which he himself is, the highest 
expression of God. For man as the individual there 
is no preservation of an Ego. As a wave of the sea, he 
rolls onward to the imperceptible loss of individuality in 
other waves ; as the lightning-stroke, he disappears in 
the heat of a new correlation. 

As a reasoner, few may more worthily command 
admiration than Spinoza ; but such admiration implies 
not necessarily acceptance of the theorems upon which 
the deductions are founded. Hence one of his critics — 
Hallam — styles him ' ' the reasoning machine. " ' ' With 
a few leading theories," says this author, "all too 
hastily taken as axiomatic, he is not only ready to 
sacrifice every principle of religion and moral right, 
but the clear intuitive notions of common sense." But 
Hallam does great injustice to the Jew. It is not to be 



204 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

seen in the writings of Spinoza that he would sacrifice 
anything of good, however mistaken he may be shown to 
be in and of his conclusions. To doubt the honesty and 
virtue of the intentions would seem impossible. In law 
— unchanging, unwavering, immutable law — Spinoza 
saw the highest and truest expression of justice \ he might 
not then but rest convinced that in an understanding 
and obeying of law lay man's highest and truest good. 

" If you, my Iccius, to whose hands 
The fruits of the SiciUan lands 
Agrippa trusts, use well your gain. 
What more can you from Jove obtain ? 
Hence with complaints ! Can he be poor 
Who all things needful may secure?" 

Difficult — most difficult — will the logician, with his 
rules, find it to overthrow Spinozism. As a system it seems 
rational, philosophical, mathematical ; and yet may our 
own judgment not but accept Descartes as the master, 
— and accept him on so simple a premise as the follow- 
ing : a son and the father are one, — for whence is the 
child if not in the parent ? — yet is the father individual, 
and likewise is the offspring individual, — the same one, 
yet two separate beings. Let that reader who may find 
himself mystified by Spinoza lay down the Ethics, and 
ponder on this proposition. 

He whose curiosity may invite him to the contem- 
plation of what might not inaptly, perhaps, be termed 
the transcendental aspect of German thought, will find 
such inclination abundantly gratified in the study of 
Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, — philosophers whose think- 
ing and manner of expression are to be recognized on 
almost all German pages. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



205 



In the system of Kant, a critique which shall be able 
to determine the laws and limits of the hmiian reason 
is the only reliable guide. Until this is gained, *'the 
profoundest philosopher may have no more assurance 
of the accuracy of his knowledge concerning divine 
things than is to be enjoyed by the common man." 
Thus, with Hallam, Kant might be disposed to give 
but little heed to axioms, like those of Spinoza, and, not 
assured of the premises, the deduction would necessarily 
amount to nothing. In studying Kant, — and with none 
of his writings may one better commence than with the 
Kritik ('' Kritik der reinen Vernunft"), — the student 
shall quickly enough find himself upon a very wide and a 
very deep sea. How much of his author he shall under- 
stand would seem to depend on his ability to perceive 
with the optic lobes of Kant himself. "In the phi- 
losophy of Kant, all those principles of knowledge 
which are original and primary, and which are deter- 
mined a priori, are called tra?isce?tdefitaL They involve 
necessary and universal truths, and thus transcend all 
truths derived from experience, which must always be 
contingent and particular. The principles of knowl- 
edge, which are pure and transcendental, form the 
ground of all knowledge that is empirical or determined 
a posterio7'i. In this sense ti-ansce^idental \s opposed to 
einpiricaiy^ Fichte is to Kant what we have seen 
Spinoza to be to Descartes : he intensifies the Master.f 

*■ Krauth's Fleming. 

f The key-note to Fichte is found in the following quotation by 
Chalybaus : 

" So long as ever man yearns to be anything, God does not come to 
him, for no man can become God, So soon, however, as he pxirely 



2o6 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

Concerning Hegel, we may be deemed to have suf- 
ficiently expressed him in referring to the Germany of 
to-day. In Hegelianism rests German thought ; Hegel 
perfects Spinoza, and is to be understood in the panthe- 
ism of the Jew. There is, says Hegel, one sole reality; 
besides this, or out of this, nothing is, or is to be con- 
ceived as being. Evolution is eternal ; it had no 
beginning. That which is, and which was, is what is 
seen in to-day, — idea perfecting itself. Object and 
subject are one ; the expression of these are the all. 
Correlation seems the key-note and the ''method" of 
Hegel. That something with which he starts is not 
absolutely the ''Substance" of Spinoza, or the "Idea" 
of Plato; it is a noumenon between these, — a some- 
thing which combines these. In the changes of this 
noumenon are explained the expressions of the world. 
Hegelianism seems, to our comprehension, strictly a 
search after a method, — after a pathway in which an 
inquirer may progress : the conception was in Plato, 
the solid ground in Spinoza. All things and relations, 
may Hegel be assumed as maintaining, are explainable, 
and this explanation is to be found in the recognition 
of a oneness. This something — the analogue of the 
^^ Sitb stance'^ of Spinoza — is termed by Hegel " Idee.'^ 



and radically annihilates himself, God alone remains, and is all in all. 
Man cannot engender God, but can annihilate himself as the true 
negation, and then he sinks or relapses into God. He has no fear 
for the future, for the absolutely Blessed guides him towards it. He 
has no repentance over the past, for in so far as he was not in God he 
was nothing ; and the past is now past, and for the first time since his 
reception into the Deity is he born into life. In so far, however, as 
he was in God, is that right and good which he has done." 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



207 



Development is the effort of this ^^ Idee''' to express 
itself The pure '' Idee" is God. . Trinitarianism is fully 
accepted by Hegel, God being an unconditional 
" Idee.''^ The Son is the expression of God, just as 
heat is the expression of the sun, being the sun, yet 
separated from that which it is. The Holy Ghost is 
the recognition of a oneness existing between object 
and subject. 

At length, and surely with data and method which 
introduce us to the confusions and conclusions of the 
philosophers, we come back to find in Comtism, or in 
that which is so called, the understanding which posi- 
tivism affords man of himself and of his relations. 

Positivism professes to be common sense. A house 
is a house ; a horse is a horse ; a tree is a tree. He 
who accepts such convictions as truths is prepared to 
understand and profit in the conclusions of materialism. 

Positivism — the positivism of M. Comte — seeks, in 
the laws of life, the rules of living. It affirms, with 
Spinoza, that to live in lav/ as man finds law, is to live 
in the law of creation, — ^and, necessarily, in the law of 
the Creator. With the reasonableness and propriety 
of things as man finds them, man has nothing to do. 
The sole concern is to understand and to accept things 
as they are. It is a law of nutrition that pabulum be 
received by the thing to be nourished : man eats. It 
is a law of muscular development that the body be 
exercised : man moves. 

"Any vulgar mariner," says a biographer of Comte, 
"could sail to America after Columbus." Comte is 
affirmed to possess his virtue in consideration of being 



2oS THINKERS AND THINKING. 

the first to point out the sociology that lay in the 
teachings of the sciences, — as on the chart of the 
Genoese was found first the line pointing to the new 
continent. ''There is," says Comte, "a natural evo- 
lution in human affairs, and that evolution is an im- 
provement." In that which is, we find that which is 
to be. 

Comtism is the application of science to comprehen- 
sion : that is to say, M. Comte maintains a Oneness 
of Life. The present is eternity — eternity is the present : 
all sciences are but parts of a common Science ; this 
common science is what might be termed the Univer- 
sal. To illustrate the teachings of this Universal 
was the effort of the author of the "Catechisme posi- 
tiviste." And this universal was to be appreciated in 
an understanding of that knowledge to which man 
might attain; namely, mathematics, astronomy, phys- 
ics, chemistry, biology, and sociology. It is not at all 
amiss to refer for an understanding of M. Comte to 
the Bacons, friar and chancellor, — for the science to 
the friar, for the sociology to the chancellor ; although 
few who have thinkingly followed with us to this page 
may fail to recognize that in each and every phase of 
thought is to be seen more or less of the sociology of 
positivism : the platform of Comte lies upon that of 
Spinoza, which in turn rests upon that which Aristotle 
laid upon the rafters of Ionian thought. 

To read Auguste Comte without being impressed 
that we follow a great mind — if peculiar — ^would seem 
impossible. Here is verification that all great things 
are simple. Biology is compressed into a few pages, 
and yet is made comprehensible. Mathematics is sim- 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



209 



plified into a self-proving single rule of three. Chem- 
istry, organic and inorganic, is molecular arrangement 
about a central common principle. 

No need or occasion is there to deny that the intel- 
lectuality of Comte has diffused itself throughout 
modern thinking ; the simple who query of phe- 
nomena unknowingly ask of him, while a Stuart Mill, 
a Herbert Spencer, and half the writers of the times 
applaud or revile him. Wonderful, truly wonderful, 
is it how broadly he thinks, and yet — how weakly he 
moralizes : 

" Writes like an angel, talks like poor Poll." 

No educated man may afford not to read Comte : 
poison is he to the sciolist alone.* 

"The ocean," say the Homeric poems, "is the 
father of the gods, and of all things." In the Iliad, 

* "That part of M. Comte's writings," says Professor Huxley, 
" which deals with the philosophy of physical science appeared to me 
to possess singularly little value, and to show that he had but the 
most superficial and merely second-hand knowledge of most branches 
of what is usually understood by science. I do not mean by this 
merely that Comte was behind our present knowledge, or that he was 
unacquainted with the details of the science of his own day. No one 
could justly make such defects cause of complaint in a philosophical 
writer of the past generation. What struck me most was his want of 
apprehension of the great features of science, his strange mistakes as 
to the merits of his scientific cotemporaries," etc. 

Not at all strange is it that the scientist should write thus of the 
philosopher. Akin is it with what is seen every day in the histologist 
whose mental vision is apt to become so myopic that his nature not 
less than his brain becomes limited to the expressions of the single cell 
his time is half wasted in peering into. Yet these have their uses : 
lenses are they to the presbyopic. 



2IO THINKERS AND THINKING. 

Agamemnon calls on the gods to witness contracts ; 
after Jupiter of Olympus, he invokes '^the all-seeing, 
all-hearing sun, the rivers, the earth, and lastly the 
gods who punish perjured men in the regions below."* 



■-■• " The Olympian deities are assembled round Jupiter as his family, 
in which he maintains the mild dignity of a patriarchal king. He 
assigns their several provinces, and controls their authority. Their 
combined efforts cannot give the slightest shock to his power, nor 
retard the execution of his will; and hence their waywardness, even 
when it incurs his rebuke, cannot ruffle the inward serenity of his soul. 
The tremendous nod with which he confirms his decrees can neither 
be revoked nor frustrated. As his might is irresistible, so is his 
wisdom unsearchable. He holds the golden balance in which are 
poised the destinies of nations and of men ; from the two vessels that 
stand at his threshold, he draws the good and evil gifts that alternately 
sweeten and imbitter mortal existence. The eternal order of things, 
the ground of the immutable succession of events, is his, and therefore 
he himself submits to it. Human laws derive their sanction from his 
ordinance ; earthly kings receive their sceptres from his hand; he is 
the guardian of social rights ; he watches over the fulfillment of con- 
tracts, the observance of oaths ; he punishes treachery, arrogance, and 
cruelty. The stranger and the suppliant are under his peculiar protec- 
tion ; the fence that incloses the family dwelling is in his keeping ; he 
avenges the denial and the abuse of hospitality. Yet even this greatest 
and rnost glorious of beings, as he is called, is subject, like the other 
gods, to passion and frailty. For, though secure from dissolution, 
though surpassingly beautiful and strong, and warmed with a purer 
blood than fills the veins of men, their heavenly frames are not insen- 
sible to pleasure and pain ; they need the refreshment of ambrosial 
food, and inhale a grateful savor from the sacrifices of their worshipers. 
Their other affections correspond to the grossness of their animal 
appetites. Capricious love and hatred, anger and jealousy, often dis- 
turb the calm of their bosoms. Jupiter himself cannot keep perfectly 
aloof from their quarrels ; he occasionally wavers in his purpose, is 
overreached by artifice, blinded by desire, and hurried by resent- 
ment into unseemly violence. — Thirlwall : Religion of Ancient 
Greece. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 211 

The supernatural has its origin in the traditional ; hence 
mythology has this as its first phase ; passing from this 
first to the theological. The first period, with its 
traditions, has long since passed away. The second, 
the metaphysical, is defined by Lord Bacon as that 
''which handleth the formal and final cause." Here 
is the region of ontology. ''In our perceptions alone," 
maintains Berkeley, "have we any proof of the exist- 
ence of matter. ' ' The Idealism of the English bishop 
in its outstretching and outlooking shows how grand 
an instrument is a priori reasoning; but api^iori reason- 
ing has ceased to satisfy : it could not satisfy Berkeley ; 
it has not met the wants of the thinking world either 
in Descartes or in Spinoza. 

"A new degree of culture," says Emerson, repeat- 
ing M. Comte, "would instantly revolutionize the 
entire system of human pursuits." The human mind, 
having exhausted speculation, having felt itself so 
often thrown back, turns now with greedy seeking to 
the fields of positive research: it will give the "thyrde 
^gg^ to the Sophyster and take to its own stomach the 
one and the two which alone its eyes see." The new 
degree of culture is the culture of the savants of to-day. 
Is there a sun? asks the positivist. Is not a sun the 
source and origin of heat, and is not, in its turn, heat 
the source of vegetation ? Do I not see and feel and 
taste, of vegetation ? ergo, the sun is. The forest in- 
vites moisture, and condenses the cloud into drops of 
rain : ergo, let not the forest that waters the garden be 
cut away. Atoms gravitate : ergo, he who is most lowly 
becomes best covered. Affinity is the secret of com- 
bination : ergo, he who would have most of good must 



212 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

fit himself to the reception. Thus reasons the positivist ; 
but he reasons backward. 

''The progress of the individual mind," says M. 
Comte, in that portion of the introductory to his 
"Positive Philosophy" which treats of the ''grounds 
of the law of progress," "is not only an illustration, 
but an indirect evidence, of the general mind. The 
point of departure of the individual and of the race 
being the same, the phases of the mind of a man cor- 
respond to the epochs of the mind of the race. Now, 
each of us is aware, if he look back upon his own his- 
tory, that he was a theologian in his childhood, a 
metaphysician in his youth, and a natural philosopher 
in his manhood." 

In this paragraph just quoted is assuredly to be re- 
cognized the seed of Comtism. Why this progressive 
nature of faith and inquiry ? asks Comte. It was the 
germ of the thought which spread itself over his 
volumes. 

"From the study," asserts M. Comte, "of the de- 
velopment of human intelligence in all direction and 
through all times, the discovery arises of a great funda- 
mental law, to which it is necessarily subject, and which 
has a solid foundation of proof both in the facts of 
our organization and in our historical experience. The 
law is this^ — that each of our leading conceptions, 
each branch of our knowledge, passes successively 
through three theoretical conditions, — the theologi- 
cal, or mythological ; the metaphysical, or abstract ; 
and the scientific, or positive. In other words, the 
human mind, by its nature, employs in its progress 
three methods of philosophizing, the character of 



TRINKERS AND THINKING, 213 

which is essentially different, and even radically op- 
posed, viz., the theological method, the metaphysical, 
and the positive. Hence arise three philosophies, or 
general systems of conceptions on the aggregate of 
phenomena, each of which excludes the others. The 
first is the necessary point of departure of the human 
understanding, and the third is its fixed and definitive 
state. The second is merely a state of transition." 

To lay down the peculiar platform of the modern 
positivist with less waste of words than here employed 
by M. Comte would seem impossible : the method 
of the future is defined,— the weakness of the past is 
exhibited ; the text is here, the educated man may 
follow it for himself. 

*'The theological system," continues M. Comte, 
''arrived at the highest perfection of which it is capa- 
ble when it substituted the providential action of a 
single Being for the varied operations of the numerous' 
divinities which had been before imagined. In the 
same way, in the last stage of the metaphysical system, 
men substitute one great entity (Nature) as the cause 
of all phenomena, instead of the multitude of entities 
at first supposed. In the same way, again, the ultimate 
perfection of the positive system would be — if such 
perfection could be hoped for — to represent all phe- 
nomena as particular aspects of a single general fact ; 
such as gravitation, for instance." 

That positivism succeeds mythology and metaphysics, 
and is a last aspect of human understanding, finds ex- 
planation, — in the philosophy of the French sage, — in 
a consideration of mental evolution ; yet the intuitive 
monotheism M. Comte does not trouble his system to 



214 HUNKERS AND THINKING. 

explain. Nothing strange is it that man should have 
passed from one god to many; and nothing strange is 
it that the many gods should have in turn disappeared 
in the Entities of the metaphysicians, in the ''Sub- 
stance" of Spinoza, in the ''Idee" of Hegel ; but 
strange it is that Auguste Comte, who will have positiv- 
ism deny a god, and all gods, overlooks the fact that he 
and it change, and may only change, the 7iame of God. 
Let the reader re-read, and closely ponder on the mean- 
ings of the repetition. "/;^ the same way, again, the 
ultimate pe7-fection of the positive system would be — if 
such perfection could be hoped fo?" — to 7'epi'esent all phe- 
nomena as pai'ticular aspects of a single gene?'al fact ; 
such as GRAVITATION, foT instance, "* 

* " When Alexander overran Babylon, he brought from every country 
which he had conquered one of its priesthood. Assembling them all 
together, he asked, * Do you venerate a highest invisible Being?' All 
bowed themselves and answered, ' We do.' 

"'With what title name you him?' asked the king. Thereupon 
answered the priest from India, ' We name it Brahma : that means 
the great.' The priest from Persia, ' We name it Ormus : that means 
the original light.' The priest from Judea, ' Jehovah Adonai : the 
Lord who was, is, and will be.' 

" And thus every priest had an own word wherewith he named the 
Most High. Then in his heart angered the king. 'You have only 
one ruler and one king,' said he ; ' so henceforth shall you have only 
one God : Zeus is his name.' 

" When the king had spoken, there was much sorrow, for the priests 
said to themselves, ' How can we love a new god?' 

" At length a Brahmin, a gray-haired sage, begged permission of the 
king to speak to the assembly. Turning himself to the priests, he thus 
addressed them : ' The heavenly constellation of the day, the well of 
the earthly light, — shines it in the country of all of you?" All bowed 
themselves together, and answered, ' Yes.' Then the Brahmin asked 
them one after another, ' How name you the same ?' Each one 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 215 

Positivism — that positivism which, however, is to 
exhibit itself as the rule of life — is not Comtism. 
'^ Whom the gods would destroy, they first make 
mad." Comtism is positivism run mad. We accept 
as highest and purest the proven premises of science ; 
but even a very few years have served to exhibit how 
■foolish, even in his wisdom, was Auguste Comte. Let 
all men worship woman ; but not as a goddess, — the 
goddess of Reason. Emblem of highest humanity is 
woman; but her throne is not on Olympus. Verily is 
it strange how, in some men, combine strength and 
weakness, judgment and foolishness. In the senses, 
maintains Comtism, is all truth. In the senses, demon- 
strates Pyrrho, is no truth ; for, as the senses of a man 
vary, so do his outlook and comprehension differ; 
for, whereas he who has but the senses of sight and 
feeling perceives an apple alone as being of color, 
shape, and consistence, he who has all the senses re- 
marks that it has, besides these, taste, odor, and sound. 
The error of Comtism lies in its sociology. But the 
error of positivism is not in sociology, — a sociology 
which to-day exists in the teachings of Christ, and no- 
where else in the world. Let us not turn our discourse 
into sermonizing : this is not its drift. Yet let us not fail 
to recognize that the '' Son of the carpenter" has made 
a sociology which scientific discovery after discovery 

answered, but each had a different name. Then turned the Brahmin 
to the king, and asked, ' Shall they not name henceforth the constel- 
lation of the day with the same word?' At these words the king be- 
came full of shame, and said, ' Let them each use his own word: I 
see well that the image and sign are not the essence.' " — Krummacher. 
Repeated from the author's " Odd Hours of a Physician." 



2i6 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

indorses and applauds, which the ignorant begin by 
accepting, and which the learned end in embracing ; 
and sociology is the fullness of science, is the end of 
science. 

Sociology — a sociology which keeps pace with wants, 
and which furnishes no less to-day the rules of living 
than when, eighteen hundred years ago, it took the 
place of Grecian philosophy — must be the highest 
truth of the times ; and, being truth, a solid philosophy 
must accord with it. Such accord is not in Comtism ; 
hence is Comtism — the sociology of Comtism — a lie, 
suggestio falsi. In the sciences could not Comte find 
the sum of the sciences, and his divinity, tumbling to 
the ground, was found to be — still a woman. 

Comtism denies the existence both of God and soul. 
There is nothing but matter, and all phenomena are 
expressions out of matter. Mind is no less a function 
of the brain-cells than is perspiration a work of the 
sudoriferous glands. No fault would there be to find 
with Comte had he confined his practice to the cruci- 
bles, the chemicals, and the vivisections of his labora- 
tory ; but, unlike Pythagoras, he was not satisfied with 
the realm of his work ; he aspired to be the founder of 
a social system; he would create a new society, '^sans 
Dieu ni Roi. ' ' He would have a form of worship ; but 
this only because men were too weak to rest upon 
scientific deductions : so, as there was no God, the 
Aggregate of humanity should be the object bowed 
down to. A public form of worship should there be, 
and a private. The object of public study and admira- 
tion was to be the aggregation of human greatness. The 
object of private worship might only be ''Woman," 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



217 



she representing the most perfect humanity. In a 
word, Comte desired to supersede Christ, and to oc- 
cupy his throne. How well and how fully he has suc- 
ceeded is found in inquiry of that common experience 
which is the vox legis. 

We leave — in a measure — Comte that we may pass 
to the higher and truer plane of positivism, — to that 
positivism from which has dropped the pernicious 
sociology of a man whose ambition buried and lost the 
philosopher. 

The rule of life, of living, — as existing in positivism, 
is to be found in an appreciation of the law of relation. 
Let us express the positive philosophy as maintaining 
that about and around a common centre revolve all 
things : to be in harmony with this central principle is 
necessarily to be in harmony with truth, — in harmony 
with life. 

If just here some simple soul may ask, Why do not 
the positivists call this central something — this science 
of the sciences — God, and be done with it ? we may 
only answer as we began, and say that it takes much 
knowledge to see what this central something is ; and 
the savant, having once left the point of simple faith, 
may only get back to the place from whence he started 
by going around the whole circle. Let that simple 
man, who will, stand still; in good time shall he meet 
the savant face to face. But — but how much greater is 
God to the savant than to the simple ! Wonderful is 
it to dissect and to analyze a man; but to dissect and 
analyze creation, — to know, a posteriori, the Maker of 
the world, — ah! to have coffers full of life-gold is 
this. 

J5 



2i8 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

"There are many," says Dr. Edward L. Yoiimans, 
in his introduction to the work "Correlation and 
Conservation of Forces," "who deplore what they 
regard as the materializing tendencies of modern 
science. They maintain that this profound and in- 
creasing engrossment of the mind with material objects 
is fatal to all refining and spiritualizing influence. The 
correctness of this conclusion is open to serious ques- 
tion : indeed, the history of scientific thought not only 
fails to justify it, but proves the reverse to be true. It 
show^s that the tendency of this kind of inquiry is ever 
from the material towards the abstract, the ideal, the 
spiritual." 

How peculiar the interest, and how sad the pleasure, 
with which we turn to the ' ' Testimony of the Rocks' ' 
— poor Hugh Miller ! 

" Unknown he came. He went a mysteiy, — 
A mighty vessel foundered in the calm, 
Her freight half given to the world. To die 
He longed, nor feared to meet the great ' I Am.' 
Fret not. God's mystery is solved to him. 
He quarried Truth all rough-hewn from the earth, 
And chiseled it into a perfect gem, — 
A rounded absolute. Twain at a birth, — 
Science with a celestial halo crowned. 

And heavenly Truth — God's works by his word illumined — 
Those twain he viewed in holiest concord bound." 

True positivism, together with its sociology, is well 
represented in the writings of such workers in the 
quarries of knowledge as the Cromarty stone-cutter : 
here is the a posteriori reasoning which commences in 
empirical observation and which ends in simple faith. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



219 



As the error of Comtism — of crude modern mate- 
rialism — lies in a single premise, he who would follow 
in the track of the investigators needs but a single 
warning to avoid the common confusion. To accept 
Descartes is to be clear of it. ''There is one entity, 
— God ; this entity has produced two others, — force and 
matter : in the first have these other their existence. 
Force and matter are identical, as the relations of 
transubstantiation are concerned ; but soul is a some- 
thing apart from the material. Matter may not fashion 
soul ; force cannot control it ; it is in God, and of 
God, — but how ? The soul, then, not being material, 
positivism has really nothing to do with it, except as a 
deductive sociology is concerned. Yet positivism leads 
.a searcher through the portals of God's dwelling; but 
when it has led him there the Bible alone it is — so far 
as we yet know — that at last may draw the curtain and 
show the Father." 

For him who is qualified, the study of physical phe- 
nomena finds admirable point of departure in the 
recognition of the law of correlation, — co-relation re- 
siding not only in force, but in matter. A co-relation 
of things is there ; there is no height but that there is 
corresponding depth; no solidity without its reverse 
in cellulosity ; no water without equivalent in land ; 
heat in this body implies cold in that j speed in that, 
slowness in this ; electricity positive, electricity nega- 
tive. The senses of a man are to find education 
through reflection, and in a comparison of things : 
thus, in distinguishing between active and passive, he 
recognizes the meaning of influence ; thus, with ad- 
vancing step, is he led in inquiry after this influence j 



2 20 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

and thus, at length, is he brought to perceive that in 
''reciprocal influence" lies the explanation of all 
change. Whence the original Force? whence the 
original Molecule? would seem to pertain to the Infinite, 
not to be embraced or comprehended in or by the out- 
look of the Finite. 

It is well, however, that he who starts on the explora- 
tive path of physics keeps not too constantly before 
the studious eye association with a First Cause; for thus 
is defeated the object of a work which is to find such 
cause a posteriori, and not a priori. 

Correlation applies to all things that change : it 
applies to the dancing leaves which the winter turns 
into the muck of the barnyard, and it applies no less 
to change in brain-cells as thoughts are expressed, as 
prayers are given forth. Heat correlates its form into 
that of man, and a man metamorphoses his habit into 
that of flame. Neither is sociology beyond the pale of 
a natural law of correlation ; it is not man so much — as 
cycles, that produce social changes : why, therefore, 
are not habits to be calculated as are eclipses ?* 



* " Matter and Force are at least two ultimate existences. I believe 
that we know both of these by intuition, and by no process can we 
get rid of the one or the other. As to force, it will be expedient to 
look for a moment at the grandest scientific truth estabhshed in our 
day, — a doctrine worthy of being placed alongside that of universal 
gravitation. I mean that of the conservation of physical force ; 
according to which, the sum-force, actual and potential, in the know- 
able universe is always one and the same ; it cannot be increased, it 
cannot be diminished. It has long been known that no human, no 
terrestrial power can add to or destroy the sum of matter in the 
cosmos. You commit a piece of paper to the flames, and it disap- 
pears ; but it is not lost : one part goes up in smoke, and another goes 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 221 

Assuming and acknowledging the individuality of 
Force, preserving ever the distinction between this 
entity and soul, the student may go quite as safely with 
Mill, Bain, Spencer, and Maudsley, as with George Fox 
or with the theologians proper. The modern British 
and American philosophers — positivists — are now 
everywhere to be found busy with microscope and 
telescope, — in the laboratory, by the forest, and upon 
the sea : the metaphysical aspects which Comte never 
came to see that he had not gotten clear of are allowed 
to have little concern with modern investigations. 
Matter is studied, and force is searched after, that it 
may be explained. This description represents the 
mass of workers, and the name is legion. God is 
found by such workers, a posteriori, in the argument of 
design : each day, each hour, does the macrocosm and 
the microcosm — does some insignificant beetle or some 
on-rolling planet — repeat to a doubting Aristodemus 
this great and irresistible argument. '' It is evidently ap- 
parent, Aristodemus, that He who at the beginning made 



down in ashes ; and it is conceivable that at some future time the two 
may unite, and once more form paper. ' Why may not imagination 
trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung- 
hole ? ... As thus : Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander 
returneth to dust ; the dust is earth ; of earth we make loam ; and why 
of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer- 
barrel ? 

' Imperious Caesar, dead, and turned to clay. 
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. 
Oh, that the earth, which kept the world in awe. 
Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw !'" 

McCoSH : Christianity and Positivism. 



22 2 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

man endued him with senses because they were good 
for him ; eyes, wherewith to behold whatever was visi- 
ble, and ears to hear whatever was to be heard ; for 
say, to what purpose should odors be prepared, if the 
sense of smelling be denied ? or why the distinctions 
of bitter and sweet, of savory and unsavory, unless a 
palate had been likewise given, conveniently placed, to 
arbitrate between them and declare the difference? Is 
not that providence, Aristodemus, in a most eminent 
manner conspicuous, which, because the eye of man is 
so delicate in its contexture, hath therefore prepared 
eyelids, like doors, whereby to secure it, which extend 
themselves whenever it is needful, and again close 
when sleep approaches ? Are not those eyelids pro- 
vided, as it were, with a fence on the edge of them to 
keep off the wind and guard the eye ? Even the eye- 
brow itself is not without its office, but, as a pent- 
house, is prepared to turn off the sweat, which, falling 
from the forehead, might enter and annoy that no less 
tender than astonishing part of us. Is it not to be ad- 
mired that the ears should take in sounds of every sort 
and yet are not too much filled by them ? that the 
fore-teeth of the animal should be formed in such a 
manner as is evidently best suited for the cutting of its 
food, as those on the side for grinding it to ^pieces ? 
that the mouth, through which this food is conveyed, 
should be placed so near the nose and eyes as to pre- 
vent the passing unnoticed whatever is unfit for nour- 
ishment, — while nature, on the contrary, hath set at a 
distance and concealed from the senses all that might 
disgust or in any way offend them ? And canst thou 
still doubt, Aristodemus, whether a disposition of parts 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



223 



like this should be the work of chance, or of wisdom 
and contrivance ?' ' * 

May here a positivist of the Mill school interrupt, 
and, with the words of the master, ''venture to think 
that a religion may exist without belief in a God, 
and that a religion without a God may be, even to 
Christians, an instructive and profitable contempla- 
tion" ? Wise men, when they eat the delicious and 
health-giving banana, peel off the husk. So, knowing 
of the husks of Mr. Mill, we let them not interfere with 
our digestion of his good. How truly laughable is it 
to read the learned deductions of Dr. Maudsley on the 
functions of the brain-cells, having in ourselves the wis- 
dom to see that he perceives not his own husks ! and 
yet who shall read " Body and Mind" and not thank 
the Gulstonian lecturer that he has worked out so many 
beautiful physiological problems and done so much to 
give us intellectual pleasure and profit ? 

Positivism permeates all modern thought, and per- 
meates it because of the utilitarian spirit of the times. 
Men will be religious, and men will admit no conflict 
with truth in their religion. Herein is the strength of 
the Preacher, who fails not to bring godliness and rock- 
blasting into juxtaposition; here stands an Emerson, 
"massive, and tall, and grand," too large for secta- 
rianism, too good to be denied godliness; and here 
also stand, without recognizing their platform, a mul- 
titude of good people who inveigh against positivism 
without, in truth, having other than the most indistinct 
conception of what they condemn. 

* Xenophon. 



2 24 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

Positivism, — having as its sociological meaning the 
bringing of a rule of action from the confusions of the 
various systems, religious and otherwise, which fret and 
perplex mankind, — finds in its constructivism interest 
for a constructive age : that is, a better religion is not 
felt to be required, because that which is meets all needs, 
all needs except those which apply to demonstrative 
inquiry. Christ is the accepted key to the problem; 
but positivism it is which satisfactorily explains and 
works out the sum in its details. This is at least 
healthy positivism, — healthy on the showing of those 
who, departing from such premise, find quickly their 
error. Organic in its growing force is positivism: it 
soars with the angels and delves with the antipodes \ 
nothing is too expansive for its presbyopic, nothing too 
near for its myopic, vision. That the interest in the 
teaching of this formulary is so general and of such 
satisfactory and forcible appeal, is decisive of that truth 
which is the underlying foundation. 

To no one class, however, more than to that known 
as the irreligious, appeal the teachings of positivism : 

" No man e'er felt the halter draw, 
With good opinion of the law." 

Here is the repetition of Spinoza. The sociology of posi- 
tivism, — when it deduces rules of action, — is the teach- 
ing and warning of absolute law. Throw yourself under 
the wheels of the locomotive if you will, but nothing 
shall save you from the penalty. Cast yourself in the 
sea, that you may toy with the shark which plays around 
the ship's prow, but take the misery of the bite. So 
place your mirror that it shall focus the rays of a mid- 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 225 

day Sim upon combustibles, but take the risk of a 
burned-down house. 

" Most worthy of notice is it," suggests Mr. Fred- 
erick Harrison, in " The Positivist Problem, "^^ ''how 
entirely new to modern thought is this cardinal idea 
of positivism, — that of religion, science, and industry 
working in one common life. . . . Yet so far is it 
from being an extravagant vision, that it sleeps silently 
in the depths of every brain which ever looks into 
the future of the race. None but they who dwell 
with regret on the past, or are engrossed in the cares 
of the present, doubt but that the time will come when 
the riddle of social life will be read, and the powers of 
man work in unison together ; when thought shall be 
the prelude only to action or to art, and action and art 
be but the realization of affection and emotion ; when 
brain and heart will have but one end." 

Organic unity of the sciences is the ultimate end 
of positivism ; yet before have many systems had the 
same aim, and yet have these come to nothing; but 
the problems had their working in a pi-ioii, not in a 
posterioi'i, design. 

All that is seen and understood of creation is ex- 
pressive of order : here takes the positive sociologist 
his stand-point. Circles are there within circles, wheels 
within wheels, influences within influences ; the search 
is after an original primary influence, after a founda- 
tion and a guide, after a fixed and irrefutable method. 
Positivism may be expressed as the relative in contradis- 
tinction to the absolute. The absolute looks ever wider 

* Fortnightly Review. 



2 26 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

and wider, and pauses not to consider the atmosphere 
on which its wings rest ; the relative utilizes its pos- 
sessions, and stops that it may systematize that already 
won. To get from life the secret of living is the prob- 
lem of positivism. How much of this secret has it 
already ? What it has stored in the text-books of the 
physician, let the cured invalid testify. What it under- 
stands of the mystery of space, let him who telegraphs 
to a distant continent certify. What it comprehends 
of the phenomena of a universal nature, let the long- 
anticipated eclipse calculated by the astronomical 
mathematician declare . 

Yet a Babel of ideas is positivism to the many. 
^'The man of science, who is attracted by the impor- 
tance given to the physical laws, starts back when it is 
proposed to extend these laws to the science of society. 
The student of history, who sees the profound truth 
of the philosophy of history, is scandalized by the very 
idea of a creed of scientific proof. The politician for 
a time is held by the vision it presents of social reform, 
but he is disgusted at hearing that he must take les- 
sons from the past. The conservative delights to 
find his ancient institutions so truly honored, to be 
shocked when he finds that they are honored only that 
they may be the more thoroughly transformed. The 
man of religion is touched to find in such a quarter a 
profound defense of worship and devotion, only to be 
struck dumb with horror at such a religion as that sug- 
gested by a Comte.* The democrat, who hails the 



* In a reading and re reading of Comte an impression may not 
but grow that Comte, in his worship of humanity, is misunderstood. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



227 



picture of a regenerated society, turns with scorn from 
an attempt to lay the basis of temporal and spiritual 
authority. The reactionist fares no better; for, if he 
finds some comfort in the new importance given to 
order, he dreads the results of an unqualified trust in 
popular education and the constant appeal to public 
opinion. Those whom the philosophy attracts the 
religion repels. Those whom the moral theories strike 
shrink back from the science. Those who believe in 
the forces of religion are no friends to scientific law. 
Those who care most for the progress of science are 
the first to be jealous of moral control. Hence the 
clamor against positivism. To the pure conservative it 
offers a fair mark for denunciation ; to the jester it 
offers an opening for easy ridicule, for it offers to him 
many things on which he has never thought ; but by a 
critic of any self-respect or intelligence it must be 
treated thoroughly, or not at all. There are persons 
devoid of any solid knowledge, of the very shreds of 
intellectual convictions, of any germ of social or reli- 
gious sympathies, — specialists ex hypothesi, — to whom a 
serious effort to grapple with the great problems of man 

Comte was, in a sense, a Spinozist : his " Matter" was the " Substance" 
of the Jew ; and yet to divest himself of the necessity for a God was 
impossible, — as it was impossible with Spinoza, — as it is impossible with 
every and any individual who feels his dependence. As the Theos of 
all men is the highest, so intelligence was the highest outgrowth of 
a system which denied the separability of soul and force. Intelligence 
was the fetish of Comte ; in this fetish was God : here paid he his 
devotions, feeling yet ever that it was the emblematic beauty of the 
marble that was being worshiped, and not the warm loveliness of 
heart-throbbing life. This may not be the proper conclusion ; yet it 
grows upon one as he studies the sage. 



2 28 rn INKERS AND Till N KING. 

on earth is but the occasion for a cultivated sneer, or a 
cynical appeal to the prejudices of the bigot."* 

The unity of science, a oneness, but not the socio- 
logical deductions of Comte, is the object of the posi- 
tivism of the present : that this is so, will be found in 
a common renunciation of the conclusions of Comte 
by many fellow co-workers. Yet in Comtisrn may 
we not fail to see the germ of these co-workers. 
'' Social Statics, "f the identity of which with Comtism 
is so energetically denied by its author, might yet 
very well be mistaken as a branch of the common tree, 
— the growth of a graft, let us say ; and no shame is it 
to the writer to be on such a stem : the root is greater 
than the offshoot. Alexander Bain, too, he who has 
written so grand a book, J — how allied is his work 
with the manner and matter of the positive philosophy 
of the French sage ! but Professor Bain avoids the con- 
fusions of Comtism in his very outstart. ''Human 
knowledge, experience, or consciousness," he com- 
mences, " falls under two great departments, Object 
and Subject : popularly they are called Mind and Mat- 
ter." 

The application of a positive philosophy in the 
system of the Aberdeen logician is appreciated in his 
definition of happiness. ''Happiness being defined the 
surplus of pleasure over pain, its pursuit must lie in 
accumulating things agreeable, and in warding off the 
opposites. The susceptibilities of the mind to enjoy- 



"*" The Positivist Problem. 

f Social Statics, by Herbert Spencer. 

\ Mental and Moral Science, by Alexander Bain, M.A. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



229 



ment should be gratified to the utmost, and the 
susceptibilities to suffering should be spared to the 
utmost." Here would differ Mr. Bain and Comte only 
in the reservations of the former. 

''If/' says Mr. Bain, " the enumeration of muscular . 
feelings, sensations, and emotions be complete, it con- 
tains all our pleasures and pains. On the side of 
pleasure, we have, as leading elements, muscular exer- 
cise ; rest after exercise ; healthy organic sensibility in 
general, and alimentary sensation in particular ; sweet 
tastes and odors ; soft and warm touches ; melody and 
harmony in sound ; cheerful light and colored spec- 
tacle ; the sexual feelings ; liberty after constraint ; 
sexual, maternal, and paternal love ; friendship, ad- 
miration, esteem, and sociability in general ; self-com- 
placency and praise ; power, influence, command, re- 
venge ; the interest of plot and pursuit ; the charms 
of knowledge and intellectual exertion ; the cycle of 
the fine arts, culminating in music, painting, and 
poetry, with which we couple the enjoyment of natural 
beauty; the satisfaction attainable through sympathy 
and the moral sentiment. In such an array we seem 
to have all, or nearly all, the ultimate gratifications of 
human nature. They may spread themselves by asso- 
ciation on allied objects, and especially on the means 
or instrumentality for procuring them, as health, wealth, 
knowledge, power, dignified position, virtue, society, 
country, life. 

''The pains are mostly implied in the negation of 
the pleasures, — muscular fatigue, organic derangements 
and diseases, cold, hunger, ill tastes and odors, skin 
lacerations, discords in sound, darkness, gloom and 



23© 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



excessive glare of light, iingratified sexual appetite, 
restraint after freedom, monotony, fear in all its mani- 
festations, privation in the affections, sorrow, self- 
humiliatioii and shame, impotence and servitude, dis- 
appointed revenge, balked pursuit or plot, intellectual 
contradictions and obscurity, the aesthetically ugly, 
harrowed sympathies, an evil conscience." 

As in Harriet Martineau Comte is understood better 
than in Comte' s self, so in Alexander Bain is posi- 
tivism — healthy positivism — to be understood better 
than in the positivists themselves, — shall we say, rather, 
the sociology of positivism? How much the Scotch- 
man calls himself a positivist we do not know ; most 
likely would he be found to repudiate, at least, the 
Comtian connection. Yet wonderful is the similarity 
between the, ethics of Comte and the ethics of Bain; 
and the latter, unlike Comte, may be studied with profit 
by the simple man whose thoughts have strayed never 
beyond the boundaries of his farm fences or the lati- 
tude of his wayside shop. 

While not written with nearly the clearness or clever- 
ness of the '' Mental and Moral Science," the '^ Social 
Statics" appeals from the sociological stand-point to 
the student of positivism. No one may deny to Mr. 
Spencer the attributes of a wide thinker, — not so wide 
as Comte, yet more practical, more political is he than 
Bain. Yet a p7Hori is the reasoning of this writer. 
The true positivist would a postaiori show that 
^' human happiness is the Divine will." Mr. Spencer 
starts in such a premise ; hence he stands on anti- 
cii:)ated ground, — ground, however, which the posi- 
tivist is prepared to allow, even has he not yet, in his 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 23 1 

demonstrations, come to the full and perfect knowledge 
of it. 

Happiness, says Mr. Spencer, is a certain state of 
consciousness, consciousness is in sensation, sensa- 
tion is in the exercise of the faculties : hence, if God 
wills that man should be happy, the faculties are to be 
exercised. Here our author falls into the lap of Comt- 
ism. The faculties of a man — the faculties alluded to 
by Mr. Spencer — must be, in part at least, of the body; 
for without exercise of bodily functions all others 
which express the man in his fullness fall into nega- 
tion, and hence results not pleasure, but pain. Here 
are the conclusions of Mr. Spencer : '' God wills man's 
happiness. Man's happiness can only be produced by 
the exercise of his faculties. But to exercise his 
faculties he must have liberty to do all that his faculties 
naturally impel him to do. Then God intends he 
should have liberty. Therefore he has a right to that 
liberty." 

Here is opened to the speculative mind a wide field 
for thought. And here is Mr. Spencer behind Comte, 
inasmuch as he endeavors to find his sociology, not in 
absolute truth, but in reasonings ^/r/(?;7. Pure positive 
thought explains the liberty of man in the common 
liberty of nature, and thus attains to that law which is 
above circumstances, — a common law, by which the 
social rule is to find its modifications. 

From "Social Statics" the reader will follow Mr. 
Spencer through his '' Principles of Biology." Better, 
however, will he find it if he study the latter before 
the former work ; for thus a posteriori will he come to 
the a prioiH premise of the sociology, or as near it as the 



232 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



present state of knowledge admits. Mr. Spencer talks 
of (and founds arguments upon) a God whom he feels 
a priori, but yet whom a posteriori he cannot find. 

''Social Statics" treats of ''social concerns in a 
scientific manner." Beginning with questions of ex- 
pediency, it passes quickly to the political organization 
of society, that in turn may be deduced the equity of 
the social relations. And here, after many pages of 
reasoning, is the author made orthodox to his readers 
by the compelled admission — conclusions arising natu- 
rally from his own arguments — that an abstract philoso- 
phy becomes one with all true religion. " Fidelity to 
conscience," he says, "this is the essential precept 
inculcated both by philosophy and religion. No hesi- 
tation, no paltering about probable results ; but an 
implicit submission to what is believed to be law laid 
down for us. . . . We are not to be guilty of 
that practical atheism which, seeing no guidance for 
human affairs but its own limited foresight, endeavors 
itself to play the God, and decide what will be good 
for mankind, and what bad. But, on the contrary, we 
are to search out, with a genuine humility, the rules 
ordained for us, — are to do unfalteringly, without specu- 
lating as to consequences, whatsoever these require ; 
and we are to do this in the belief that then, when 
there is perfect sincerity, — when each man is true to 
himself,— when every one strives to realize what he 
thinks the highest rectitude, — then must all things 
prosper. ' ' 

In reading these concluding lines of the great Eng- 
lish thinker, — this epitome of a great book, — let the 
simple man, — laying down the volume, — find that he 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 233 

had all the wisdom before — not, however, the details — 
in the homely work that has been familiar to him since 
the hour when his mother distinguished for him from 
other books the family Bible. 

'^Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust, 
neither doth trouble spring out of the ground." 

" I have said to corruption. Thou art my father : to 
the worm. Thou art my mother, and my sister. ' ' 

'■^ Can that which is unsavory be eaten without salt? 
or is there any taste in the white of an ^%'g'^'" 

So in one and the same paragraph do we commend 
and criticise '"Moral Statics." So in one and the 
same act is it the common habit for one to refresh him- 
self with the pulp of the banana and to throw aside the 
husk. An olla podrida of sweet and bitter is the fruit 
to him who swallows it in its entirety. 

From the stand-point of the swninum bonum of 
Socrates are modern British and American thought and 
deductions to be measured ; and he who holds close by 
such anchorage shall by no tide be drifted away. ''The 
best man, and the most beloved by the gods, is he that, 
as a husbandman, performs well the duties of hus- 
bandry ; as a surgeon, the duties of the medical art ; in 
political life, his duties towards the commonwealth. 
The man that does nothing well is neither useful nor 
agreeable to the gods." This is the text, a prioii ; but 
let him who would demonstrate it a posteriori see the 
proof in the teachings of nature. 

Here are we introduced to writers like Mr. Bain, 
and like Mr. Carpenter, — to the positive side of such 
authors. "Human knowledge, experience, or con- 
sciousness," says Mr. Bain, "falls under two great 

16 



234 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

departments : popularly they are called mind and 
matter ; philosophers further employ the terms Ex- 
ternal World and Internal World, Not-Self, or Non- 
Ego, and Self, or Ego." 

"The experience or consciousness of a tree, a river, a 
constellation, illustrates what is meant by Object. The 
experience of a pleasure, a pain, a volition, a thought, 
comes under the head of Subject." 

" There is nothing that we can know, or conceive of, 
but is included under one or the other of these two 
great departments. They comprehend the entire uni- 
verse as ascertainable by us." 

In parenthesis, let here be recalled the criticism of the 
Alexandrian dialectics on the accuracy of the so-called 
positive knowledge. Here is an apple, might some 
Plotinus or Philo say to a positivist : it is an object ; let 
it be truly described. A semi-solid body is it, answers 
the positivist : it possesses color, taste, smell, and sound. 
Now is the apple passed to the blind man : with this it 
has feeling, taste, smell, and sound, but no color. Now 
to the man blind and without gustation or olfaction : 
with this an apple is a body semi-solid, and capable of 
giving forth audible sound, but no color, no taste, no 
smell. Again, it is given to a man deficient in all the 
senses : to this the apple differs in no respect from a 
stone, or from the tree which produced the fruit. Still, 
again, is the apple passed to a being possessed of senses 
in excess of the common man : with this the qualities 
grow as the senses are in over-count. Then would a 
Plotinus suggest that, as it is demonstrated that " knowl- 
edge is not the same as the thing known," through 
positive knowledge alone can the finite never come to 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 235 

know the infinite ; but through the portals, has it been 
affirmed J will positive knowledge lead. Ecstasy is it, 
says Plotinus, which is that higher sense that perfects 
knowledge, that sense which to the created shows 
the Creator. This criticism of dialectics would seem 
entirely irrefutable. Knowledge and the thing known 
may only be alike as these accord with the requirements 
of him who thinks he knows. The ''Ecstasy" of 
Plotinus is the Revelation of the Christian. 

With the Alexandrian in mind, may one follow the 
positivist, learning from him many beautiful things ; 
learning from him the mysteries of creation \ passing 
on step by step, growing towards a new attribute, — the 
attribute which allies the finite with the infinite ; grow- 
ing into mysticism, into religion, but never to be de- 
ceived by the superficial and premature conclusions of 
positivism. 

Positivism, to be rightly studied, would seem to be 
pursuable properly after the order laid down for medi- 
cal study. First we understand anatomy, that physi- 
ology may be comprehended ; physiology underlies 
necessarily pathological details ; pathology directs to 
therapeutics ; and in therapeutics lie the reasonings on 
cure. Thus it is that in the " Mental and Moral 
Science" of Mr. Bain we find its own commendation. 
Our author discusses first, and unravels the physical 
mysteries of, the cerebro-spinal system, that he may get 
at the mental mysteries of the organization. The 
anatomy of the senses is laid bare, that one may see 
how it is that the soul, and not the retinal ganglion, 
looks out ; how it is that the Ego, and not merely a 
hundred little threads, takes cognizance of the sweet 



236 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

odors of nature ; how it is that the inner ear, and not 
the portio mollis, listens to the dreamy and to the 
stern sounds of the world. From such an anatomy, 
only, however, too superficially considered, does this 
writer lead the student to his ethics ; but here, gathered 
into compact mass, is compensation ; here into a com- 
mon sea are found emptying multitudinous rivers of 
thought. 

Persistence of force, shows Mr. Herbert Spencer, 
must be the text of philosophy, the fundamental truth, 
inasmuch as it is the principle underlying all life.* 
But from this postulate starts Mr. Spencer. Persistence 
of force, he maintains, must be the basis of any scientific 
organization of experiences ; for this transcends expe- 
rience by being before it. And truly does he speak 
strong words in teaching that to this '^ ultimate" 
analysis brings us, and that upon this, synthesis is 
alone able to rear her structure. Yes, most true — 
irrefutable — is it, that in such analysis and synthesis 
does science terminate. But whence the thought that 
correlates itself into human expression through mo- 
lecular change in vitalized cells? — whence the mo- 
mentum in the soul's motions, — the speech, the changes, 
the somnambulistic wanderings ? Ah ! how here like 
the school-boy with the lessons of an uncrossable/t^/zj- 
asinoriim is seen a Maudsley ! and how here stumble 
all strong mortals and stop the baffled ones ! But, yet, 
what do we not learn ! Here we measure equivalents ; 
here, physically speaking, we may estimate the value, 
in grains of corn or in phosphorus, of a thought, — of the 

* Mr. Spencer's term for correlation. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 237 

expression of a thought ; here a book weighs so many 
ounces or pounds of butcher's meat ; and here the In- 
fernos of a Dante are seen to be clothed from maca- 
roni. . . . Yet above all this, garbed in that 
infinitude which matter touches not, is the soul, — the 
infinite that uses the finite. Ah ! gracious soul, how 
wonderful and everlasting must thou be, that thus crea- 
tion ministers to thee ! 

A sturdy, isolated tree, on his Scotch hill, lives a 
Carlyle. ''You come to see me," said the giant to an 
American who made a passing call at the heather-car- 
peted farm. ''Well, here I am: look at me." And 
yet in another hour the glum grimalkin had pulled on 
his stout boots, and with our friend was trudging in 
boylike mood towards the city of Glasgow, telling 
strange stories and laughing at his own wit. Thus also 
is the Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, so insulting, witty, 
vigorous, philosophic, learned ; thus, — had it been 
better understood, — -is that honesty which a "Black- 
wood" denounces as "scoffing, ironical, rending to 
pieces everything, — politics, philosophy, religion." 
"Happy men," writes Carlyle, "are full of the 
present, for its * bounty suffices them ; and wise men 
also, for its duties engage them. Our grand business 
undoubtedly is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, 
but to do what lies clearly at hand : 

" Know'st thou yesterday, its aim and reason? 
Work'st thou well to-day for worthy things ? 
Then calmly wait the morrow's hidden season, 
And fear not thou, what hap soe'er it brings." 

"The age," exclaims the Scot, "has become me- 



2 3.8 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

chanical ; metaphysical and the moral sciences are 
falling into decay. We must now have the aid of 
machinery to assist us in the commonest offices of our 
eVery-day work. The land of Malebranche, Pascal, 
Descartes, and Fenelon has now only its Cousins and 
Villemains ; while in the department of physics it 
reckons far other names. The science of the age, in 
short, is physical, chemical, physiological, and, in all 
shapes, mechanical. We have more mathematics cer- 
tainly than ever, but less mathesis. Archimedes and 
Plato could not have read the Mecanique Celeste ; but 
neither could the whole French Institute see aught 
in that saying, ^ God geometrizes/ but a sentimental 
rhodomontade. " Disgusted with the misleadings of 
professors ignorant as the led, Carlyle celebrates '' to- 
day," and finds consolation in the ending of all prem- 
ises in a common nothingness. ''No longer is the 
implement of logic meditation, but logic ; ' cause 
and effect' is almost the only category under which 
we look at, and work with, all nature. Our first ques- 
tion with regard to any object is not, What is it? 
but. How is it? . . . Our favorite philosophers 
have no love, and no hatred ; they stand among us 
not to do nor to create a thing, but as a sort of logic- 
mills to grind out the true causes and effects of all that 
is done and created. . . . All is well that works 
quietly. An order of Ignatius Loyola, a presbyterian- 
ism of John Knox, a Wickliffe, or a Plenry the Eighth, 
are simply so many mechanical phenomena, caused 
or causing. . . . When we can drain the ocean 
into our mill-ponds, and bottle up the force of gravity, 
to be sold by retail, in our gas-jars, then may we hope 



THINKERS AND THINKING, 239 

to comprehend the infinitudes of man's soul under 
formulas of profit and loss, and rule over this too, as 
over a patent engine, by checks and valves and 
balances. ' ' 

Let the study of positivism find what antidote it 
needs in the reading of the sturdy, obstinate, common- 
sense Scotchman : read his " Signs of the Times," his 
'' Voltaire," his '^ Characteristics," his '^ Burns, "his 
"Sartor Resartus," his ''French Revolution;" in short, 
read him everywhere, and read him all over. He is the 
rein that hold in check the pseudo-Comtist. " It will 
be with thee, Theages, as God wills." Like unto some 
brave eagle soars Carlyle over the earth-works of the 
positivists, looking down scornfully and contemptu- 
ously, yet not unmindful of the mechanical rifle whose 
ball threatens. There may be a rule, but he will none 
of it. There may be a manufactured ethic, but the 
soul despises it for its earth-birth. " Ubi bene nemo 
melius, ubi male nemo pejus," quotes Dr. Thomas in 
speaking of Carlyle. Yet so much more is there of the 
better than of the worse that man may but exclaim, 
' ' How grand and how massive is he ! " 

The proper study of man, maintains Carlyle, is man ; 
and to know man is not to know him in his indi- 
viduality, but as he is related to society. What are the 
flesh and the bones and the vessels ? let the positivist 
have these, and let him tell all he knows about these ; 
of the earth are they, earthy. Society calls forth the 
spiritual activities, quickens and strengthens them. 
Let the history of the past, might Carlyle say, teach 
doubt of the theorems of a too sanguine present. '' The 
disease of metaphysics is a perennial one. In all ages — 



240 



THINKERS AND THINK I NG. 



in some form, . . . have the questions of to-day- 
arisen ; ever, from time to time, must the attempt to 
shape for ourselves some theorem of the universe be 
repeated. And ever unsuccessfully : for what theorem 
of the infinite can the finite render complete? We, 
the whole species of mankind, and our whole existence 
and history, are but a floating speck in the illimitable 
Ocean of the All ; yet in that ocean, indissoluble por- 
tion thereof, partaking of its infinite tendencies, borne 
this way and that by its deep-swelling tides and grand 
ocean-currents, — of which what faintest chance is there 
we should ever exhaust the significance, ascertain the 
coming and the going?" 

Ever with us in our gatherings, ever talking to us, 
ever telling something new and manly and grand, 
are Emerson and Holmes. A stern old man is the 
former, — stern, except to the friends whose good for- 
tune puts them close to his heart. We watch his 
protruding, intellectual eyes, and understand the rest- 
less soul that squeezes itself into the orbits, chiding the 
organs which will not, because they may not, look far 
enough and wide enough for its impatience. Then 
turn we to the other face, knowing never whether it 
laughs with or mocks us, — understanding scarcely the 
positivism of Elsie Venner, — receiving in doubt the 
strictures of the Poet. About the neck of the old man 
would we throw arms of love and think how grand must 
it be to dwell with such in heaven. At the other we 
distantly look, and wonder if the crust conceals a cynic. 
Upon the surface floats Emerson ; midway between the 
face of his river and its bottom look we ever for Holmes. 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 241 

Yet, grand Americans, before you we bow, and pay 
humble homage ; and we bow to the simplicity of a 
Whittier; we repeat the "Psalm of Life," and thank 
God for the example of a Longfellow; "In the 
woods" we find with Bryant the living temple of the 
living God, and are happy that in such company it is 
permitted us to offer up worship. Oh, ye grand thinkers 
of our age and of our own time, thanks be to the earth 
and to the soul which produced you as high things for 
emulation, — as leavenj that saves the mass from putres- 
cence 1 



ADDENDUM. 



•' Men say that they know many things; 
But, lo ! they have taken wings, — 
The arts and sciences, 
And a thousand appliances: 
The wind that blows 
Is all that anybody knows." 

Not this exactly is it, but the little that "anybody" 
knows is little indeed. "To know," said Confucius, 
"that we know what we know, and that we do not 
know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." 
Meagre in detail is our little book, and more has it 
confined its pages to the showing of what is unknown 
than in exhibiting the known : so ever sit we and our 
friends meditating upon the stupendous pretensions of 
the microcosm, smiling with quiet smile as theory 
after theory is brought to naught, as man after man is 
stripped and disappears. 

So, as our outlook grows, does our inlook widen ; and 
as we behold the wearied sons of the world ever stop- 
ping to listen to a quiet pleading voice away down 
somewhere in the heart, we come to decide that this 
voice is man's good angel; and yet, philosophical, we 
242 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



243 



satisfy ourselves that we decide aright by comparing 
this with other angels of light, — by comparing it with 
that mighty Angel of Law with which positivism has 
made us so intimately acquainted. And of all miracles 
of which we ever think, that which most confounds, is 
the proximity of the simple and the learned. None 
but God, we say, could have devised that men should 
be so far separated and yet stand so near together. 

To b:ing philosophy down from the clouds and to 
apply it to every-day living, — this is, as suggests Socrates, 
the good of philosophy. And have we failed to show 
that a practical philosophy is, after all, but a very simple 
matter? What have been for the researches of the world 
at which we have so superficially hinted, but to find a rule 
of living? What is metaphysics, with all the deep delvings 
of a Plato and the cloud-explorations of a Berkeley, but 
a search after a rule, after an a pi-iori rule of faith ? 
What is all science — the microscope, the telescope, and 
the hundred new scopes of to-day, the pickings into hill- 
sides, the dredgings into the mud of a Noachian deluge, 
the peerings into a palaeozoic age, palseontological re- 
searches, stone ages, bronze ages, and iron ages, and 
the multitudinous things of positivism-r— but a search 
after rule ? And what, after all this, is an old family 
Bible, which any school-boy may read, and any miss 
in her teens understand, but a rule of life, to which, 
in the- end, come back for guidance the palaeontologist, 
the microscopist, and the astronomer? Yes, it is the 
greatest of all miracles that Literate and Illiterate are 
found thus close together. 

Wonderful and incomprehensible is it, say oftentimes 
the friends that gather in our office, that men, with the 



244 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



law of living and of comfort so persistently before 
them, continue in foolish courses. ''I see," does a 
Thoreau say, "young men, my townsmen, whose 
misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, 
cattle, and farming-tools, for these are more easily 
acquired than gotten rid of. Better if they had been 
born in the open pasture, and suckled by a wolf, that 
they might have seen with clearer eyes what fields they 
were called to labor in." " Who," does he love to ask, 
*'who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they 
eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat 
only his peck of dirt ? Why should they begin dig- 
ging their graves as soon as they are born ? They have 
got to live a man's life, pushing all these things before 
them, and get on as well as they can. How many a 
poor immortal soul have I met, well-nigh crushed and 
smothered under its load, creeping down the road of 
life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, 
— its Augean stables never cleaned, — and one hundred 
acres of land, — tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot ! 
The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary 
inherited incumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue 
and cultivate a few cubic inches of flesh. The better 
part of the man becomes soon ploughed into the soil 
for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called 
necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, 
laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt, 
and which thieves will break through and steal. It is a 
fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of 
it, if not before." 

The friends of our grate-side all respect the thinker of 
Walden. Wonderful is it, however, with what short 



THINKERS AND THINKING. . 245 

steps he carries us from an Acropolis to a soubasse- 
ment. Some, who ride in their carriages and are 
waited on at table by liveried servants, shrug their 
shoulders: these are they who have traveled into 
France and who have learned the use of the speechless 
speech ; but seldom is word spoken. A millionaire, 
who is addicted to philosophy yet wedded to his many 
cares, is not unapt to smile, and his face, for a single 
moment, will show gleams of boyhood carelessness. A 
shipping merchant, read of many books and languages, 
yet kept to his tasks by a frivolous family who each year 
consume a fortune, draws himself ever, when Thoreau 
talks, as far away from the circle as possible ; for the 
freshness and quiet of water so calm as the pond bring 
before him, by contrast, visions of wrecked ventures 
and stranded hopes. But on and on will Thoreau talk, 
and his "skewer" he whittles with the unconcern of a 
sage ; and never do we tire of his quaint speech, or of 
his Socratic Concordian hints, for they affect and im- 
press us as did the sayings of his predecessor affect and 
impress Alcibiades. 

"All very interesting is this talk of "Thoreau," will 
sometimes whisper to his next neighbor the author of 
"Currents and Counter- Currents," "but 'plan' is the 
thing. ' ' Acres, and barns, and farming-utensils go as 
fast as a man, for around its centre does the earth carry 
them all. Nothing may go on well, however, without 
a plan ; "neither a game of chess, nor a campaign, nor 
a manufacturing or commercial enterprise. And is a 
man to think that he can play this game of life, that he 
can fight this desperate battle, that he can organize this 
mighty enterprise, without sitting down to count the 



246 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

cost and fix the principle of action by which he is to 
be governed?" 

And sometimes, in contemptuous tone, will a stranger, 
who happens to sit with us, pronounce the talk of 
Thoreau nonsense and balderdash. ^'A pretty kind 
of a hut," will he say, ''is the Walden mansion for 
the rearing of a family." 

But the Concord sage finds always a defender. " It 
is a principle," will the defense say, " for which Thoreau 
contends : his own illustration was an extreme, not at 
all designed for general guidance, but lived to show how 
simple a thing is simplicity." 

''Pish !" perhaps will the stranger exclaim; and, if 
he does, we leave him to that to which he seems born. 

On an occasion when the author was reading to the 
company what in this book is put down on Conscience, 
most abrupt interruption was made by one who, with 
"Elsie Venner" open upon his lap, had fallen at the 
moment on the following passage: "Conscience itself 
requires a conscience, or nothing can be more unscrupu- 
lous. It told Saul that he did well in persecuting the 
Christians. It has goaded countless multitudes of various 
creeds to endless forms of self-torture. The cities of 
India are full of cripples it has made. The hill-sides of 
Syria are riddled with holes, where miserable hermits, 
whose lives it had palsied, lived and died like the vermin 
they harbored. Our libraries are crammed with books 
written by spiritual hypochondriacs, who inspected all 
their moral secretions a dozen times a day. They are 
full of interest, but they should be transferred from the 
shelf of the theologian to that of the medical man who 
makes a study of insanity. ' ' 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 247 

A Catholic priest who sits much with us, and who 
has grave doubts of the orthodoxy of the " Professor," 
remarked that Dr. Hohiies understood not yet the law 
of compensation. ''The holes in riddled hill-sides," 
he suggested, "'and the .crippled limbs of India," have 
in them voices which the ears of none but the devout 
are open to ; just as celibates in faith know ecstasy of 
which the sensual have never dreamed. 

The " double-entendre" is the instrument of the Pro- 
fessor. Stings, as well as fragrance, has he the knack of 
putting into his flowers. The priest says this. The 
doctor, on this occasion, asked the clergyman if he 
had ever heard of Deacon Rumrill, "who wore the 
great iron-bound spectacles, he who had the hanging 
nether lip, and tremulous voice, and who so often got 
his brain into a muddle about the beast with the two 
horns, or the woman that fled into the wilderness. ' ' 

One of our friends, a student of medicine, — one, how- 
ever, who has written very few prescriptions, yet who 
has in his note-book a multitude of recipes, — thought 
that the priest need heed little a doctor who advises 
the throwing of physic to the fishes; a suggestion at 
which an old practitioner smiled, but said nothing. 

Plotinus, however, it is, against whom the Autocrat 
may least defend himself. All listen when these 
contend : it is the mysticism of Alexandrian dialectics 
against Boston practicalities. 

With ever responsive natures listen we to that philos- 
opher of heart things, Ik Marvel. Never absent from 
our gatherings is this most delightful thinker. Over 
and again we ask him to repeat to us that sweet 
dedication to "Mary:" over and again we compel 



2 48 THINKERS AND THINKING. 

him to speak that freshness which went with him 
through lUyria, and which was all ablaze with careless 
happiness when the logs blazed upon the hearth of the 
country house. Tell us, we often ask him, after weary 
discussions of the secretary Oldenburg, — tell us about 
the baron and his drinking-horn ; for in the tempta- 
tion and resistance of a thirst-dying man we are not 
unapt to find the lesson denied in the Spinozan con- 
templation. 

" Many centuries ago,"— -thus does he always com- 
mence this story, — '^ when things were different from 
what they are now, and men were tempted by Satan in 
the shape of goblins and elves, as they are tempted now 
by him in the shape of men and women, — there lived 
a pious and brave baron of Oldenburg, Hildrick by 
name, who was kind to his vassals, and said his prayers 
in spite of all the devil could do. Hildrick had gone 
out one day to hunt, and, excited by the chase, had 
ridden away from his companions and lost himself in 
the forest. For hours he rode on, not knowing which 
way he was going. At length, when he was nearly 
exhausted by fatigue and thirst, he espied, through an 
opening in the trees, a tall hill. He spurred his jaded 
horse towards the eminence, thinking that possibly 
he might see from the top either the turrets of his 
castle or some signs of his comrades. But he was 
doomed to be disappointed : he could see from the 
top neither turret nor horsemen, and heard only the 
wind rushing through the openings of the forest, or the 
howl of a bear from some dark thicket. The baron was 
near failing from his horse, exhausted by hard riding 
and a raging thirst, when suddenly there appeared be- 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 249 

hind him, as if she had come up the other side of the 
mountain, a beautiful damsel in white, bearing a drink- 
ing-horn full of sparkling liquor. Softly she approached 
the baron and put the horn into his hand. Hildrick 
murmured a word of thanks, — his fatigue would allow 
him no more, — and put the rim of the horn to his lips, 
when suddenly he remembered that he had been warned 
against a strange lady who should come to him with a 
goblet of wine. His thirst was raging, but he implored 
the aid of his patron saint and dashed the liquor be- 
hind him. His horse reared and plunged, for where 
so much as a drop had touched his flank the skin was 
raw and bloody." 

Ever is it that at this point of the story there comes 
from a corner the suggestion that young men may read Ik 
Marvel for the love that floats upon his surface, old men 
should read him for the lessons which flow beneath. 

Staid and solemn, ever with the thoughtful head 
resting against the mantel-piece, is our American Plato. 
''All things," he is wont to say, ''will be found to 
have root in an invisible, spiritual reality." "The 
times are the masquerade of the eternities ; trivial to the 
dull, tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise ; 
the receptacle in which the past leaves its history, the 
quarry out of which the genius of to-day is building up 
the future." 

Thus from one to another do our thoughts go. With 
Tuckerman we are optimists and will see naught but 
the bright and promising. We close our eyes to winter 
frosts, and glean with Todd in summer fields- 
Yet is the optimist most apt to be quieted by the 
statistician, and the poet by the politician. Amer- 

17 



^5o 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 



icans, still these lookers-ahead say, — and so loud do 
they speak that not to listen is impossible, — Americans 
may not afford, in their excursions with optimists 
and flower-gleaners, to overlook what shall affect, if 
not themselves, their children. The cry of a false de- 
mocracy rampant through the length and breadth of 
the land is not less pernicious in its meaning than 
that which disquieted a Pericles, and made Socrates 
weep for the future of Athens ! It is not the voice of ex- 
pediency, neither of experience, that one man is as good 
as another : the voice is it rather of the demagogue who 
howls so loudly in the market-place that, as groans are 
drowned in battle by the sounds of the empty drum, 
so in the forum is sense denied voice through blatant 
confusions. Let this be understood, by him who has 
judgment enough to reason, by reference to the "Amer- 
ican Notes" of the keen-seeing Dickens. How almost 
universal the denunciation that went up at the portrait 
of our follies ! Nothing was there too bad to say or 
think of an artist who made for the sitter a true picture. 
We grew wiser, however; and when a second visit 
brought the author to our shores, we treated him with 
becoming respect, because we had in the mean time 
become convinced of the follies and vices which 
offended, and had learned to use spittoons and confine 
slang and brag to the horse-stable and the cock-pit. 

"Cities," was Diogenes of Sinope wont to say, 
"are ruined when they are unable to distinguish 
worthless citizens from virtuous ones." In the famous 
defense by Blackstone of a House of Lords do we 
find the same sentiment. What sheer nonsense is this 
talk of equality ! No greater curse comes to a people 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 251 

than such ill doctrine. Rule a city by the mob, and 
where goes that incentive to honest toil which produces 
property and is the only assurance of peace and com- 
fort? Make all men equal, and the grade must corre- 
spond with the meanest. What is it which grows and 
develops the latent germs of the arts and the sciences, 
of poesy and literature? What is it which elicits 
great thoughts and great actions? Equality? Yes, 
equality ; but equality with the noble and with the 
good. There is but one true democracy, — maintains 
our politician, — ^^the right to life, to liberty, and to 
pursuit.". Let the mean man grovel in his mire, and 
live in his meanness ; but force him not on the compan- 
ionship of the virtuous, take not the ignorant to judge 
of law, nor the spendthrift to legislate on property. 

Out with your trashy cry of equality, cries our statisti- 
cian ; make first the low churl as good as the master who 
has fought his manful way from nothingness to honored 
place, and then bring them together for fraternization. 

" I was surprised," interrupts Mr. Emerson, " in my 
visit to England, to observe the very small attendance 
usually in the House of Lords. Out of five hundred and 
seventy-three peers, on ordinary days, only twenty or 
thirty. Where are they? I asked. At home on their 
estates, . . . or in the Alps, or up the Rhine, in 
the Hartz Mountains, or in Egypt, or in India, on the 
Ghauts. But, with such interests at stake, how can 
these men afford to neglect them? 'Oh,' replied my 
friend, ' why should they work for themselves, when 
every man in England works for them, and will suffer 
before they come to harm? The hardest radical in- 
stantly uncovers and changes his tone to a lord.' " 



252 TlIhXKERS AND THINKING. 

And so are they wise in suffering for the lords, and 
in uncovering and in changing tone to them. For *'a 
peerage or Westminster Abbey" fights the greatest 
battles of England, and makes Englishmen to-day the 
freest people of the earth. Each man does a homage 
which, in turn, he hopes to have done to himself, or to 
the son of his love. 

Let not, continues our statistician, a Thackeray mock 
at the snobbishness of his countrymen. A pity it is that 
there is so little of the English style of this commodity 
in our own market : the word respect shall lose soon its 
place in the American vocabulary, and shop-boys come 
to discuss as to who is to rule the counter, journeymen 
will dictate to their employers, and maid-servants de- 
cide the dinner of the mistress. 

We believe in ambition, and in the incentives to am- 
bitious effort. Happy is the individual and favored 
the people whose mark is above that already attained 
to. English aristocracy has for a thousand years in- 
fluenced, through varying fortune, English traits. As 
the wealth of Rome and a devotion to her religion 
brought forth and nourished the highest art of the 
world, so national honor and hope of distinction have, 
in England, tempted upward many a discouraged Whit- 
tington, many a Bacon, many a Nelson; turned many 
an ill-favored lad into a Clive; watered, tended, and 
nourished great deeds that now in turn constitute 
England's greatness. 

But politics disturb the quiet of our gatherings; and 
so we, like our neighbors, the respectable members of 
respectable communities, are much inclined to leave 
such matters to our other neighbors of the precinct- 



THINKERS AND THINKING. 253 

house around the corner, and we go on with our con- 
templations, until — until the tax-gatherer comes with 
the burden which we call iniquitous, — until some in- 
spector Malseigne, "bull-hearted and bull-headed," 
shall open sessions, meeting those elected corporals 
"that can read and write." 

. . . "Heroic love," says a quiet, observant gen- 
tleman, who always has his seat at the window, and 
who is ever looking upon the passers while others are 
talking, — "heroic love is the exhilaration of cham- 
pagne : rapture gives it in the hour of its draught, but in 
the morning is headache, and — heartache ; but marital 
privileges, like unto water from a spring, bubble forth 
in a continuous freshness, being not less grateful at the 
last than in the beginning." 

People who speak seldom gain always heed for what 
they may utter. Our quiet friend of the window, wor- 
thily, we feel, commands our thoughts : always is there 
a period of quiet after one of his suggestions. 

Oftentimes do we discuss — among the multitudinous 
things about which we talk — the locations of our re- 
spective dwelling-places. By the side of the grand sea 
is it, says one, that humanity receives its highest and 
holiest inspirations : here all is magnitude; here catches 
man that sense of immensity of which he is a part ; 
here, in the persistent murmur of the waves, is the 
type of the eternal ; the gloom of night upon a moon- 
less water is the emblem of nothingness. 

Rather is it, suggests another, that in the exhilara- 
tion which comes of breathing the rarefied atmosphere 



254 



HUNKERS AND THINKING. 



of high mountains, does man find his greatest freedom 
from depressing influences. Here, upon peaks over- 
looking the lowlands, where a great field is seen as the 
square on a checker-board, and where churches with 
their steeples, — so high when looked at from below, — 
are beheld as the toy houses with which children 
play, — here men become as gods, measuring with dis- 
criminating eyes the littleness of earthly things. 

In the fine-furnished library, says the sage, busts 
upon every pedestal, and the faces of great men look- 
ing their power into your heart from every frame which 
ornaments the wall, — here is the dwelling-place, be it 
by the sea-side or upon the mountain. 

In a quiet valley is it, says the gleaner, where the 
swing of the scythe keeps time with the song of con- 
tent, and where the lullaby of the matron is taught by 
the kine that browse in the meadow. 

In the great city is it, says the sitter at the window, 
where, by watching lives, we may catch the secret of 
living. 

''To know huckleberries and blueberries," inter- 
rupts Thoreau, ''ask the cow-boys and the partridges. 
Never let the citizen think himself able to form judg- 
ment of a hill-berry. It is a vulgar error for a man who 
has never plucked the fruit to suppose he knows any- 
thing about it." What Thoreau means, we, who know 
him well, understand. 

But our discussions concerning location never amount 
to anything; for, as each makes search to example his 
own preference, we are of necessity led to j)erceive that 
Hearts, rather than Heads, it is, which make Homes. 



"ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN." 

BY JOHN DARBY, 

AUTHOR OF "thinkers AND THINKING," ETC., ETC. 

i6mo, Fine Cloth. Price, $1.50. 

Few books published during the past years have had from the press 
a more favorable reception than " Odd Hours of a Physician." It is 
a work to be read, not once, but many times. Upon every page is 
some word of instruction, encouragement, or entertainment. 

The publishers, desirous of widely extending the circulation of a 
work possessed of such marked character in the way of common sense 
and healthfulness as applied to every-day life and living, call attention 
to a few selected from a multitude of commendatory notices. 

"... A volume of capital essays, in which a scientific and cultured 
mind adapts itself most happily to the enlightenment of minds less 
cultured, while it also must e.xcite a sympathetic interest in scholars 
and men of letters. ' John Darby,' whose real name in the common- 
place, practical world might be guessed by the knowing ones, is a 
practical philosopher of the most healthful character. Wit, learning, 
cleverness, and, above all, common sense, show themselves on every 
page of his delightful book. He combines in his cheerful speculations 
some of the rare qualities of Lamb, of Professor Wilson, of Dr. 
Holmes, of Thoreau, and of a dozen others of the sound and cheering 
humorists and philosophers of this country and Europe. There has 
been no better and more healthful volume published for many a day 
than this of ' John Darby's.' " —Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. 

" The frank, genial egotism of this volume, with its occasional dashes 
of miscellaneous lore, recalls a certam fiavor of Montaigne, while its 
shrewd worldly wisdom and homely common sense suggest a spice 
of Franklin and Cobbett. The writer has evidently turned his leisure 
moments to good account, storing up the fruits of curious learning, 
and enriching the experience of life with a spirit of keen observation 
and pregnant reflection." — New York Tribune. 

"The essays presented are wide in their range and thoroughly 
modern in their culture and teachings ; the opinions advanced are 
clearly and gracefully stated. . . . The volume is an important and 
agreeable addition to literature." — Age. 

" The odd thoughts of odd hours and the result of careful study. 
. . . The author launches out into the field of speculation with a cheer- 
fulness that is refreshing. We predict for the work a host of readers." 
— Harrisbtirg Patriot. 

"... The book is devoted to light philosophy, and bears the mark 
rather of the educated thinker than of simply a medical man." — Bal- 
timore Gazette. 



"The style of tlie book is, at times, brilliant to eloquence." — A^eio 
York Evening Mail. 

'* This attractive volume contains a series of moral essays on various 
subjects, written in a familiar and pleasing style. The illustrations are 
taken from the ordinary events of daily life, and the attentive reader 
cannot fail to become wiser and better by putting in practical applica- 
tion the homely lessons taught by this agreeable volume." — Philadel- 
phia Public Ledger. 

"... In fact, the whole work, notwithstanding the diversityof the 
topics considered, has the end in view of teaching the unreasonable 
the true happiness of being contented with their respective lots. 

"... We have read the book with much pleasure, and shall keep 
it on our library-table for a frequent reference and an amusement in 
our leisure hours. The author, who writes incog., is believed to be a 
distinguished surgeon of Philadelphia, and who, we doubt not, may 
be tempted by the success which his little work is sure to meet to give 
us his true name, and add another claim to a reputation already so well 
deserved among his brethren." — Nezo York Medical Record. 

" No method marks the range of thought embodied in these essays, 
but the vagrant mind of the author has put up and unpacked at any 
chance hospitable whim. Although often prying into the outlying 
regions of the unknown, his are not the pert formulce of the mounte- 
bank who treads the tight-rope of our mental horizon and startles us 
by the audacity of his pranks ; nor yet the imperious affirmations of the 
austere thinker; but the calm musings of an introspective mind, — the 
quaint thoughts of a Quaker philosopher, and, indeed, quite as quamtly 
costumed. 

" That the author has always reached his goal — the truth — cannot 
be affirmed ; for in studying that book of nature — that " volumen ope- 
riuii Dei, et tanquam altera Scriptura," as Bacon so happily calls it — 
one is far from understanding all he reads. Some truths are prehen- 
sible and available ; others hover at a distance, dim in outline ; too 
many, alas ! are lost in the haze of our ignorance, unseen, and even 
unsuspected. 

"... To those of our readers who find time to dream day-dreams, 
we say, ' Buy this book, for it will give you much pleasure as well as 
profit.' To the author — whose nom de guerre cannot disguise from 
us a well-known surgeon of this city — we tender our hearty thanks 
for many charming hours spent over these genial and healthful essays." 
— Philadelphia Medical Times. 

'^^ For sale by Booksellers generally, or will be sent by 
mail, postpaid, on receipt of the price by 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., Publishers, 
715 and 717 Market Street, JPhilad&lphia. 

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